Inevitability
by AllyEmrys
Summary: Broken Merlin. Unbreakable Arthur. Cameras and celli and really awful coffee and painful relationships and frightening pasts and snow and kisses and the fact that they will always, always find each other in the end.
1. Chapter 1

**Oh my GOD. I can't believe this is done. I honestly, honestly canNOT believe I did it. First fic I have EVEREVER finished in my life.**

**This is for Love is a strange thing, who very calmly and very bluntly helped me sort the Shit from the Fit. She deserves more than a mention and a dedication, she deserves a frickin' star named after her. Love you, Sadie!**

**A solid 'T' for some strong language (Arthur drops the F-bomb a fair bit :/), mentions of suicide and abuse, implied adult situations. **

**Allow me to present to you my precious_ Inevitability._ Broken Merlin. Unbreakable Arthur. Both seemingly predestined to find each other again, and again, and again until they finally_, finally_ click. It's going to annoy you. It may make you cry. It's slow and it's agonizing and it's completely fragmented, but that's life, isn't it? Life is a mess of coffee and biros and rosin and snow and crazy friends and scary pasts, and it's the moving forward that finally makes you come ALIVE. And sometimes your life is governed by one thing**

******Inevitability**  


* * *

"_Spread your wings and fly away_

_Fly away, far away_

_Spread your little wings and fly away_

_Fly away, far away_

_Pull yourself together, _

_Cos you know you should do better,_

_That's because you're a free man…."_

-Queen

_Some things really are inevitable._

* * *

**13 November, 2004, 08.42**

Arthur hates the rain. He ducks low against the heavy shower, turning the collar of his trenchcoat around his neck and holding his briefcase over his head. He hates how desperately empty it makes him feel.

He curses as a gust of wind blows needles of rain across his face, raising his hands to cover his cheeks from the stinging wind. Unexpectedly, the movement of his arms causes his foot to stutter on the curb, and Arthur hovers in the air for a moment, his arms wind-milling, before he stumbles awkwardly out into traffic.

A horn blares directly in his ear, and Arthur, half-crouched in the road, is caught up in the way the raindrops seem to freeze before the headlights, catching their yellow glow and glittering in the air. His heart aches, and suddenly his mind goes entirely blank. His eyes drift shut peacefully. Would it be so bad to just—?

"Watch out!"

A body hits him sharply in the side. He rolls into the flooded gutter, his briefcase flipping open and spilling documents over the gritty water.

Arthur breathes. He breathes deeply for a moment, caught in the arms of his savior and the side of his face pressed into the icy water. Cars continue to honk, drivers leaning out of their windows to yell at him, but Arthur just breathes.

He marvels in the sensation.

The person holding him is panting roughly; deep, rasping gusts that disrupt the tempo of Arthur's smooth breaths. It's a young man, painfully thin and surrounded by thin, sprawling limbs and an enormously long striped scarf. His eyes are deeply shadowed and his dark hair—in the rain, it's impossible to tell if it's black or brown—is sticking up madly on one side and drenched to his skull on the other, a bit too long and hanging in choppy clumps around his strikingly narrow face. Striking…his eyes are incredibly blue, a deep and uncommon color that seems to drill right into Arthur's head.

He's also holding a wad of Arthur's papers, which he's evidently fished from the gutter.

Terribly important papers. Arthur stares at them. The world snaps back into focus

"Jesus Christ!" Arthur stumbles to his knees and snatches the waterlogged papers from the dark-haired man, straightening them desperately against his trousers. The ink words are smeared and unintelligible, the legal stock they are printed on breaking apart against his wool slacks. "Fuck!"

The man watches him, still splayed half-on the curb and half-off of it, and Arthur lashes out at him, wanting to cry but forcing his increasing frustration on this innocent stranger instead. He towers over the man, his anger making him taller.

"You _idiot_! Do you realize how important these papers are?"

The man cringes, his very-blue eyes flicking to the road. Arthur follows his gaze and notices for the first time that the muddy pavement is littered with shiny papers that flutter desperately beneath the rolling treads of splashing tires. One is kicked up from the road and skids towards the curb, and Arthur sees what once had probably been a black and white photograph of a mother and child. He feels a twisting sensation in his stomach as the man pulls it towards himself with one long finger, briefly holding it before his elfin face before letting it drop into the puddle. Arthur swallows, crumples his ruined documents in his fist, and walks on.

He pretends that he doesn't feel guilty for leaving the man in the road without so much as a 'thank you'.

* * *

He listens to the pounding of his heart. His eyes are trained on the angry, possibly suicidal blonde man's retreating back, a back covered in a wool gabardine trenchcoat that is stained with dark patches of dirty water.

His fingers itch, his chest squeezing as the inspiration settles quietly over his mind and he realizes a missed opportunity. His camera is on his breakfast table, but he can't ignore the feeling that _this_ photograph, of _this_ angry, awkward man with his bright head down and his wet shoulders hunched as he fords through the otherwise emotionless businessmen, would be his best photograph in a long time.

Photographs….

He looks at the scattered portfolio and feels like crying.

* * *

**16 November, 2005, 07.24**

One unremarkable winter Thursday, Arthur wakes up with a crick in his neck and a flush of goose pimples across his bare arms. He rubs his hands over his face, gingerly prodding the tender circles beneath his eyes. He hates that feeling of unexplainable dread one sometimes gets upon regaining consciousness after a night of too much Gouda cheese and hard ale.

He hisses as his toes brush over the cool white tile of his bathroom floor. Today will not be a good day.

* * *

**14.56**

Merlin Emrys sits on the subway, a cardboard cup of Costa ristretto in his left hand and the broken bits of his life in the other.

The photographs he holds are slivers from moments of his past, choppy glimpses of the road he has walked. They show a girl, her dark hair tangled and curling out of the knit hat she wears, her lips and cheeks slapped red from the cold. Her hand, linked in his, and the paintbrush they draw across a canvas together. Their legs, his long and pale and hers soft between them, folded together on a white landscape of sheets. Her pain, laid bare even as she hides from it, eyes turned to the sky and tears tinged with kohl on her cheeks. Suitcases, and her back as she pulls them away from him, her arm raised and hailing a cab with a desperate swing, and his hand extended to her, palm up with his fingers curled loosely over her key.

He closes the portfolio with a flick of his wrist and sets it neatly on his lap, taking a sip of his bland coffee as he fishes for a felt-tipped pen in his carrier. He uncaps it with his mouth and scrawls her name across the scrap of tape running the length of the portfolio's leather spine.

_Freya._

He crams portfolio and pen into his carrier and takes a long pull of his coffee, trying to steel himself from emotion. Freya is gone now, just images wrapped in another black folder. Just another name to add to his lonely shelf.

He groans, and lets his forehead drop against the window. His face is reflected back at him, warped and twisted in the vandalized surface. He smiles slightly. Warped and twisted, just like him—just like the negatives tucked into his breast pocket that burn against his heart.

* * *

**15.07**

The slip of paper frowns at him, sharp, typeface words slashing his heart as his eyes drift over them.

_Fired._

How can he, Arthur _Pendragon_, be fired from his position as MD of _Pendragon_ Incorporated? Can you even fire a MD?

He groans, and picks himself up from his seat on the back steps of his _former_ workplace, staring straight ahead as the smokers leaning against the dumpsters watch him with cold, calculating eyes.

He doesn't know what to do with himself, so he goes to the park. He sits on a bench and holds his head in his hands. The incriminating paper sits next to him and flutters in the slight breeze, adamant that it not be forgotten.

Impeached. His employees have _impeached_ him. He isn't sure if that's possible, but they have, and now he has no pride and no job.

He releases his hair and takes up the slip, stretching it to its paper limits and reading the words once more.

…_selfish motives have led the corporation into demeaning lawsuits and…_

…_careless management…_

…_improper use of power..._

Arthur grits his teeth and tears the paper with one solid motion. The satisfying rip drives away the sounds of his possessions clattering off of his desk and into the rubbish bin against the sweeping arm of his brother Mordred. He smiles slightly and rips the two halves again, imagining they are Mordred's face.

"_You're wiped away, Arthur. Gone. Pendragon Incorporated begins again today."_

_Rip._

"_Always father's little boy, weren't you, Arthur? Did what he said even when you knew it was wrong. You're just a pawn, Arthur, a playing piece under his thumb, and look where you've dragged our company."_

_Rip._

"_He's _dead,_ Arthur, and you're as good as it, acting like his ghost, the bloody tyrant. Get out."_

_Rip._

Mordred. Arthur remembers his birth, how his mother and his father alike fell for the crystalline eyes and fragile complexion. How his father, at last, could show off his biological heir to the world. How he had ignored Arthur from that point forward.

Arthur's mother had loved him. He was sure of it. He was born of another man, yes, but not falsely. His birth father had been a painter, French, and beautiful, just like his mother. Arthur had been created out of pure love on a starry, starry night where the sky was black pricked with blue and the Seine had laughed against its dark banks. His mother had been young, painfully so, and delicate as lace, her life centered around her little boy from the mysterious painter who came with the spring and was gone by summer. He vaguely remembers their small apartment with the river view, and his mother who loved him holding him up to the huge window in their empty loft and naming the stars.

Uther had been twenty-seven years older and kind, understanding of her bastard child and their low economic stature, entirely in love with her beauty and her paints. When they married she was twenty-two and Arthur wasn't mentioned to Uther's family.

For a while he was treated exquisitely well. They were a perfect family, a dark-haired father and a light-haired mother with their beautiful blue-eyed child. Arthur loved his new father with all of a son's adoration. Igraine was weak and unable to have a child, so Arthur was named heir to the Pendragon line, and the Pendragons were happy.

Then, by some miracle, there was Mordred. He was all milk-colored skin and dark hair and silver-blue eyes like his father. His mother loved him with the force of a hurricane, and by that time she hadn't the strength to do so. Igraine died shortly after Mordred could handle solid foods, and that was the end of Arthur's happy childhood.

Arthur wasn't the true heir anymore, but he was eager to please and always tried to make his father proud. He turned out top in his class, graduated from Cambridge with honors, and worked his way through the business ladder at Pendragon Incorporated. He was the logical successor when Uther fell ill and Mordred was still fresh from secondary school.

Uther died the next year, and Mordred did not attend the funeral.

Sibling rivalry had always been high between the two. Still, Arthur felt a sense of brotherly compulsion to put Mordred to work at a midlevel job in the family business. After that, it was easy for Mordred and his blue Pendragon eyes to sneak up the business ladder and worm his way into the hearts of the workers. He'd been elected chairman and had held the position for less than a week before striking Arthur down.

Now Arthur sits on a bench in a park, watching children playing in the purple lawn and being led away from frosty flowerbeds by their mothers. His heart gives a sad twist; he's given up _this_, a family, a sense of belonging, to please his father—his _dead_ father, a father who gave up loving him twenty years ago.

Someone sits on the bench next to him. He glances up and sees an angular man folding into himself. Arthur considers asking him why he's curling around his heart, but decides against it when the answer creeps down his spine like ice water.

Everyone is broken in some way. Everyone has issues, and most people can't solve them. The whole damn_ world_ is full of sad fuckers like Arthur and this nameless man, living without a purpose and without a future, sitting on park benches _breaking_ under the blue arch of the sky. Arthur cracks a smile and releases his tight fists, letting the pieces of his past fall like confetti onto the frost-hardened ground.

The man turns his head to look at Arthur from beneath his bent arms. Arthur would later say that he looked like a frog when he did this, but the man does it with such awkward elegance that he would be lying.

"Life sucks," the man says, a small smile flickering over his dark lips.

Arthur laughs, and it feels wrong and empty in his twisting stomach. "Yeah, it does."

"Coffee?" the man says, straightening his back but drawing his knee against his chest as he does so. He reaches around himself and produces a rather beaten commercial coffee cup. "It's a ristretto, but it's from Costa so it's shitty and all."

Arthur takes it, his bare fingers touching the man's holey gloves as they briefly hold the cup together. He pulls in a long drag of the coffee, and the man is right. "Disgusting," he says as he passes it back.

The man smiles again, and Arthur notices something with much surprise. This is the man, who, months before, had pulled him out of traffic. He is the very same man, down to the singular bone structure and the unnecessarily long scarf, and is now cocking his head and considering Arthur intently. His eyes are narrowed but not in an unfriendly manner—he appears to be _judging_ Arthur in some way.

Arthur swallows and looks at his hands. The skin there is dry and cracked and dusted with light hairs that catch the cold sunlight but seek invisibility. He flexes his fingers and the cracks widen momentarily. He imagines that in that instant, he can see down into the cells, into the very atoms that he is made of.

"Thanks," he mutters, and the man nods. The acknowledgement is not for the coffee and they both know it.

Arthur is suddenly afflicted with a desire to produce some sort of tribute for this broken man who stepped out of his world to save another's life. He stands and offers his hand. The man stares at it in mild shock. He doesn't take it, but Arthur doesn't recall his gesture.

"Want to get some lunch?" he asks, and he is unfamiliar with having the time or desire to offer a meal to someone other than himself or his father.

The man shakes his head and draws a soft leather carrier into his lap, extracting an elderly SLR camera and cradling it between his gloved hands. "I have a previous engagement."

Arthur nods, presses his hands hesitantly against his trousers, and walks away uncertainly, as if he doesn't know where to go next.

* * *

Merlin watches him walk away again, and this time he is armed. He smiles as he raises the camera to eye level. It is just how it should be; the blonde man in his trenchcoat, head down as he walks with uncertain purpose, standing out from the mothers and children who part to his stride.

* * *

**Mmm, sorry if the horizontal rulers are annoying, I never know what to put for page breaks ****-_-**

**Please REVIEW! I will update next Monday.**

**xoxo Ally**


	2. Chapter 2

**All will become clear in time. Thank you for the lovely reviews, specifically to an anon, birdy. Wish I could reply :(**

**I couldn't wait for Love is a strange thing to edit this, and I wouldn't ask her again (NNWM cram-time!), so this is edited by yours truly, sorry for any mistakes xoxo**

* * *

**19 November, 2005, 22.58**

He hasn't played cello like this in far too long. He hasn't had the time or the will to practice since he left college, but now he supposes has to fill his days _some_how.

He holds his breath when he first opens the case, trailing his fingers over its hard shell before unclasping the tarnished locks. The velvet cloth draped over his cello shivers in the suddenly fresh air, and the strings give an airy sigh

The first day he only touches, smoothing his fingers over the fine grain of the wood, tracing them along its subtle swells and valleys, stroking the neck and curling against the nut.

The second day he tunes, cranking the pegs delicately and brushing the strings with his thumb to test their tone. He holds the bow, weighs it between his hands, and does not play.

The third day he falls asleep over his afternoon tea, and when he wakes London is covered in a fine layer of snow. He doesn't stay at home to practice the idea of practicing, but wanders through the city, watching the flakes soften and blur the air against yellow streetlights. He pauses on the far side of Westminster Bridge to count the minutes creeping by on the iconic clock tower, resting his hands on the railing and blinking snow from his eyes.

The sun sets behind the clouds, turning them a deep, reflective purple. Passersby dwindle from a crush to a crowd and Arthur is no longer jostled against the cold marble he leans against. He thinks about returning home, but his empty, conservative flat is less friendly than the sludgy bridge and the bright busses that trundle along it. He stays.

The clock strikes eleven with a resounding chorus, and Arthur shrugs out of his trenchcoat. He backs away from the railing and leans his head back, extending his arms as he turns in a vague circle, dancing a slow waltz with the falling snow.

The snow kisses his cheek. Arthur closes his eyes and thinks of Paris.

* * *

**23.03**

Merlin is breathless.

He snatches at the snow, pressing it to his bare face in wordless glee. His knees shiver and he sinks to the ground, a small, black stain in the white expanse of the empty park.

He remembers snow, back in—back _there,_ but he's never seen it in London, not like this untouched, crystalline snow that crunches between his palms and arabesques through the air. It's pure white and soft and slightly too wet and wholly perfect, and Merlin laughs in pealing puffs of white breath that melt the flakes on the end of his nose.

He shifts backwards until he is spread across the white canvas of the ground, the soft and dreamlike sound of snow meeting snow caressing his ear softly as flakes gather in his hair. He imagines film panning out from his serene face, rising to fill the lens with the park and the sparkling river, rising, rising, so that London is a mass of light and buildings and people and in the middle of it all is Merlin Emrys, whole and absorbed and entirely _defined_ by this snow.

He doesn't notice the tears until they melt the snowflakes in his eyelashes.

* * *

**20 November, 2006, 09.58**

Merlin draws his knees up to his chest, tucking his blanket around them before reaching to spread the photographs across his low coffee table. He frowns as he trails his fingers around the images, framing them against the glass tabletop. None have that special something that Merlin looks for in his art. They are all generic photographs, well-executed, yes, but empty. _Soulless_. Completely lacking the purpose of the style—souls bleed through black and white, direct and unencumbered by distracting colors to draw the focus away.

He scatters the images with a disdainful push, watching mutely as they twist, wraithlike, to the floor. He sighs, and crawls across the worn leather couch to reach for his old portfolios. His fingers seek the two oldest albums, both battered and well-worn, and retreats to the warmth of his afghan.

The first one he opens is dark red, and the cover is nicked in many places. "Hey, Will," Merlin says quietly, and turns to the first page.

Here is Will, irritated but tolerant of the ever-present camera as he smiles quirkily, his eyes crossed and looking away from the lens. Will, tying his old red plimsolls that show up as gray, his hair mussed and a clot of marmalade trailing down his shirt. Sleeping in a field, arms folded behind neck and face turned to the sun, and Merlin's hand brushing the white pollen from his dusty shoulder. With hands pressed to lips, eyes distant and looking uneasily to the side after their first experimental kiss. Lying in his narrow bed, naked chest bare of hair and blanket hanging over his hipbone, hands curled gently on the off-white sheets. A sunset, blurred into a web of color because Will had grabbed his waist playfully. Will, his hand raised in a jaunty wave as he looked over his shoulder on his way to his rusty old truck, calling something to Merlin's mother and winking at the camera.

Will, cold and stiff in his rigid coffin, hands gripping at nothing and hair combed unnaturally from his pale forehead. Will, b. born May seventeenth, 1986, d. August third, 2004. Will, who parked on the side of the freeway to Leeds and gassed himself.

Merlin swallows and closes the portfolio, pressing it to his chest as if he is holding his best friend again.

Leaving is hard. Being left is harder.

* * *

**13.57**

The first notes are hesitant. They tug at the strings of his heart, pulling the edges of a wound that still hasn't healed.

He breathes, closes his eyes and really _breathes._ Breathing makes him remember rain, and horns, and dark, filthy water staining his palms and face and papers, and the _man_.

The next notes come with surety. He coaxes the bow across the string, and lets out the first ringing chord.

_D minor._ He smiles. The saddest chord.

Sometimes it hurts to remember, and sometimes it hurts to forget.

Remembering that you've forgotten hurts the most.

* * *

**14 December, 2006, 15.33**

Arthur stands in the weak December sunshine, his boots as frozen to the sidewalk as ice is to the letterbox of the ramshackle building rising up before him.

He remembers what his mother told him, twenty or so years ago before his first meaningless concert, and takes in a deep breath. In, out. Calm, composed. He rolls his shoulders and feels the weight of his cello pressing against his back, the crinkle of the sheet music tucked against his side.

He considers his options. He could go back to the apartment, white and empty, to the small standup piano and the stool he uses when practices in one corner of the blank living room. He could carry on sitting alone in his house and fumbling his way through life.

Or, he could try again.

He has enough funds to go for quite some time without feeling the press of the economy. He could carry this cello, the instrument his mother loved, into the marble townhouse and up the four flights of stairs to where the old man who offered to give him lessons was waiting. He could take those lessons, improve, _make_ something out of this time spent striking metal strings with a bundle of horsehair.

Arthur breathes. In, out. Calm, composed. Run, stay.

He stays.

* * *

**23 December, 2006, 03.36**

Sometimes when he sleeps the photographs come to life.

They dance across his memory, snapshots of happy and sad moments that he will remember or forget, tugging at his hair, pressing against his lips, calling out to him.

Sometimes he dreams himself into them, glossy faces and hands and limbs all connecting his mind to his heart to his finger, pressed to the trigger like a gun. Some say that photography traps the soul, and if it is true he has captured many. A simple flex of his index finger and a quiet click and part of someone's soul is gone. A second of their life is trapped on glossy paper and buried beneath a glass frame.

He has killed part of Freya, and of Will, and of so many others.

He wonders about the man in the trenchcoat, the one with the blond hair and the thin nose who offered Merlin his hand. He wonders if the man would still offer his hand, knowing that Merlin so selfishly steals souls.

He thinks that he would.

* * *

**I listened to entirely too many Queen songs while writing this, and it still turned out angsty :/ But then, I loooove angst, so that's probably why.**

**Please review!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Quick update, because I'm on potato/beans/biscuit duty tomorrow, I volunteer Friday, and tutor Saturday, and as such will be unable to update again until Monday.**

**Still self-edited, still sorry about that. 6 days 'til I get my editor back!**

**

* * *

8 November, 2007 17.47**

Arthur is walking through the November rain again, his cello strapped to his back and his trenchcoat draped over it and not him. Water soaks his sweater and the cuffs of his trousers and drips from the end of his nose onto his chapped lips.

He's changed in many ways since music came back into his life. He sees _people_ now, not bodies wearing suits and briefcases and blank expressions. He sees the man who sits in a shop window, his eyes distant and his hand pressed idly to the glass, and he wonders He sees the girl who sees him back with eyes of a child, quietly brilliant and endlessly knowing, following her mother with the air of one who follows to _lead_, and he remembers_._ He sees the people who can't see, and he imagines he had worn the suit and briefcase and blank expressions in his own time. Before.

He also hears. The rain is music that pounds into his soul and sends shivers over his wet skin. It is the quiet tick of many metronomes meshing together, an orchestra of droplets falling in syncopation in the streets of London.

He taps his fingers against the strap of his soft cello case like he would its strings, shifting into fifth position and marking the beat with his thumb. He melds the _vibratos _and the _staccato_ notes flawlessly in his mind, though he knows he has yet to master both on the broadest strings of his instrument.

Here_ the woodwinds would die away and let the percussion build tension,_ here_ the lower strings would surge forward like a crack of thunder, _here _there would be violins streaking on the E string like flashes of lighting, _here_ a cymbal would crash and-_

He rounds a corner with his eyes focused on the notes he composes in his mind and is startled from his music by _himself._

He pauses to press his palm to the glass of the window, feeling the rolling drops bite at his skin. His fingers hesitate, drumming on the strap of his cello in light confusion. They reach to open the door without consulting his brain.

The shop is a small gallery, and it is full of quiet people. Some have come to seek refuge from the rain, and they talk softly as they stroll around the room. Others appear to belong there, hands clasped behind backs and eyes intent on the images that hang from the walls. Arthur feels a bit out of place and ducks his head, feeling the bulk of his cello against his back and hoping that he doesn't knock it into anything.

He makes his way to the back of the shop, and _there_ is the soft black-and-white photograph of him. He hovers a few feet away until the small group of people discussing it move on to the next image. It's a bit strange, listening to connoisseurs wax poetic over a photograph of ordinary Arthur.

The photograph is of him walking, and he cannot place the time. It was before the music, surely, for the sharp curve of his back has not yet known the thrill of Mendelsohn, his clenched fists have yet to hold a bow loosely and firmly and just-so on the curve of the strings. He definitely knows that it's him, from the light trenchcoat that is muted in the bright sunlight that surrounds him like a halo. Yes, the head is the real focus of the photograph. It is turned slightly to the side, so that his profile is seen as a slice of light, the sun catching and holding it precisely. His lips are parted and his chin is low and he looks for the whole world as if he's been—

"Defeated," he says out loud, touching his face lightly and imagining how he would turn it to recreate the photograph.

"Wrong, actually," a familiar voice says, too close to his ear for comfort.

Arthur spins around and comes face-to-face with the dark-haired man, who grins suddenly and brightly and blood beats in Arthur's temple twice like a migraine before settling into its usually rhythm. "Sorry?" he asks, the automatic apology shifting into a question at the last second. He clutches the cello to his form as an illogical means of protection.

The dark-haired man and his strange blue eyes look at him, _judging_ yet again. "It's titled 'Carrying On,' because if you think about it, a defeated person looks more like _that._"

He waves a hand across the room, and Arthur lets his eyes run over another black-and-white photograph. This one is of a young girl, leaning out over the city with the sunset on her shoulders, her hands pressed to her mouth and a single black tear running the length of her cheek. He looks back at the man, probing him with his eyes.

"You took these…?"

The man brushes the air with his fingertips noncommittally and turns away, his thin hand lowering to his side and curling against air. Arthur blinks after him, watching the man flit away like smoke in the photograph-lined room, disappearing behind a woman in a bright yellow cagoule.

He touches the strap of his cello case to reassure himself, and steps out into the rain again with one last glance at the Arthur hanging on the wall with the other photographs.

He pauses, and then he does what he has been entitled to do.

He carries on.

* * *

Merlin doesn't like being praised. He hates it when people commend him for his work.

He sells his photographs out of necessity; he has known starving artists before and he doesn't want to become one. He doesn't enjoy doing it, and some photographs are so personal that he can't bring himself to display them. Those he keeps in his portfolios, sections of his life only to be brought into the light in brief, private moments of reflection.

He keeps himself buried between those leather bindings.

Merlin always attends his shows, but he never claims the photographs as his. He prefers to wander the small gallery that houses them and observe his life through the eyes of a stranger, another nameless onlooker and not the _Merlin Emrys _scrawled elegantly in the corners of the images.

He thinks about being just like the onlookers. He wonders what it would be like to be someone else.

He wonders what it would be like to be the man _Carrying On._

**

* * *

12 November, 2007, 10.29**

Merlin is in his dark room, a black-maroon cubby full of hazy fumes that sting his nose and stir his inspiration. He leans close to the surface of the chemical bath that his photographs drown in and holds his breath, his nose inches from the glittering solution. He can see himself reflected in the eerie red water, eyes large and black and mouth a pouting line. His subjects flicker at the bottom of the well he gazes into, distant images speaking in jumbled phrases.

He loves this part, the waiting. He loves the thrill on the back of his tongue as he anticipates the souls and the shells, the catches with meaning and the throwaways without.

Lately he's had very few good shots. He thinks the last of his creativity left with Freya-Freya with the broken past and the shrouded future; Freya with the wild hair and the radical ideas and the bruises on her arms she wouldn't explain; Freya with the passion and the paints and the spirit of sea foam and the soft hands and Merlin's heart.

She left him his eyes, but she took his _sight_.

He shakes his head and thinks about _Carrying On. _It's the first patch of light that's penetrated the gloom of his dark room in a long time.

**

* * *

16 November, 2007, 23.16**

_Epressivo._

Arthur's eyes are shut; he lets his fingers caress the strings in their familiar way, his bow singing fifths as it slides forward and backward and he is lost, his thoughts wrapped around _tenuto _and _grazioso _and his ears engaged to the sounds of the orchestra around him.

He is alone is his empty apartment, but the voices of the other instruments sing in his mind.

_

* * *

What are the chances of two people meeting in a city containing over thirteen million strangers?_

**

* * *

22 November, 2007, 15.20**

"—and I want you eating _proper_ food, Merlin, not just rice cakes and that horrible coffee you insist on drinking."

Merlin nods vaguely, his hands spanning the white piano keys in sevenths. He presses down lightly in an arpeggiated chord—D minor. He smiles. The saddest key.

His uncle frowns from his low stool, flexing his hands to ward away the inevitable rheumatism for another day before drawing his thick bow over a round of rosin. "I don't know why you didn't continue with the piano, Merlin. You were very talented."

The piano sings an airy scale, the soft creak of the pedals almost absorbing the sounds of the faint notes. Merlin removes his hands slowly, letting them hover over the ebony like low tree branches.

"It doesn't speak to me," he answers quietly, and touches the strap of his camera.

Downstairs the front door bangs open to accept Gauis' next student, and Merlin stands with a casual bend of his knees. "See you, Gaius," he murmurs dreamily, imagining the lighting of the narrow street outside, how it would color the red brick townhouses a dusky orange in the afternoon sunlight.

He leaves Gaius' dusty music room, trailing his hand absently on the mahogany banister in the hallway. A streak of red light stops him, and he raises his camera to the patterned skylight above the stairwell, twisting his shoulders to focus on the dancing sunbeams.

Feet thud on the stairs, taking them much too quickly for the steep angle of the steps. Merlin spins around with a gasp. He sees blue eyes, soft and regal, before he sees a chin and then a jaw and then there is a crash of bodies and Merlin is on the floor, staring up at _Carrying On._

"Christ!" the man gasps, and drops to a crouch next to Merlin's prone form, tucking his cello against his side as he does so. "Are you alright?"

Merlin can't speak. The man leans over his face with the red light shining through his hair, and Merlin lifts his camera to his eye and pulls the trigger.

_Carrying On_ reels back onto his heels, so close to the stairs, to falling, and Merlin catches his ankle lightly, his arm bent over his face and his eyes locked to the regal blue.

The man steadies himself against the mahogany railing, squinting at Merlin. "Again, you…."

Merlin shrugs awkwardly and crawls to the bannister, pulling himself up and clutching his camera tightly. His heart still beats fierce adrenaline through his veins at the shot he has managed. His eyes itch to see the result.

"What in the…?"

Gaius creaks to the door of his music room, raising his eyebrow crookedly as he catalogues the scene. Merlin, sagging against the railing, his knuckles white against his camera, Arthur, picking himself off of the thin Persian carpet runner and reaching for his hard cello case in an embarrassed way, the red light filtering over them like fire. "Merlin, did you abuse Arthur with that camera?"

Merlin shrugs again and inches past Arthur. For a split second camera meets cello, and then each pull their passions away into the safe cradle of their arms. Merlin takes the stairs much too fast for their steep angle, and smiles to himself.

Something in common.

And now he knows the man's name.

Arthur. Regal, like his eyes.

* * *

**Holy hell, how on earth did November slip by so quickly? Have a lovely Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it, and I hope everyone enjoys the last few days before the holiday crush!**

**xoxo Ally**


	4. Chapter 4

**OMG! Where have I been? you might ask. Why have I not updated? you may shout. I have been busy! I will reply. Busy, busy, far, far too busy. So busy, in fact, that I'm waaaay behind on 'Mysterious Fathoms Below' (I haven't written the next chapter yet? Whaaat?). Also, I am sick. Waah! **

**But, in the meantime while I brain myself and potentially ruin MFB by forcing myself to write (:'(), you may have a chapter of Inevitability. Yay. I have a niggling feeling that the editing is not up-to-spot this time (D:) as I had a roaring migraine when I slugged through it and my somewhat beta is throwing ridiculous ideas at me like 'Merlin as Misto and Arthur as the Rum Tum Tugger!' which I will never, EVER write, and 'Merlin as a Russian dancer from Kirov, PLZ?' which I have embraced but is slow in forthcoming. **

**I'm preparing for the Nutcracker this Saturday! The mind-numbingly lovely adagio from the Pas de Deux is very much so stuck in my head.**

**

* * *

22 November 2007, 17.04**

Arthur eases his cello into its velvet-lined shell and loosens his bow, his mind still turning over the short etude he had just played. He slips it over the soft nobs that hold it in place and closes his case thoughtfully.

"Merlin likes you," Gaius says evenly as he creaks to his feet. Arthur turns, already slinging his case onto his back.

"Who?" he asks absently, brushing the damp hair off of his forehead. He always breaks a sweat playing the rapid finger work exercises.

Gaius closes the piano cover softly and motions for Arthur to leave the room ahead of him. "My nephew, Merlin. He only takes photographs of people he feels a connection to."

"Oh," Arthur says, out of politeness. The name suddenly hits him, and his spine gives an odd little jerk. "Merlin _Emrys_?"

His music teacher smiles broadly. "Ah, a fan. Yes, my nephew is a talented (albeit precipitous) photographer."

"He took a picture of me before!" Arthur says abruptly, slightly affronted that the man—Merlin, fucking _Merlin Emrys_—hadn't introduced himself. Everybody knows about Merlin Emrys; some of his earlier pieces had even hung in his old office. "He didn't tell me who he was…."

Gaius looks uncomfortable for a moment and fiddles with the cuffs of his shirt. "Yes, well. Merlin doesn't like…acknowledgement, I suppose. His communications skills are…."

"Total shit," Arthur supplies, still feeling bristled by this progression in his field of understanding the strange, dark-haired man.

"He's never been social," Gaius amends, following Arthur down the stairs as closely as his stiff bones can allow. "As far as I can tell, he doesn't openly approach people—he sees the world differently than most of us….Often times, I think he views himself as an outsider, as if he's not 'one of us,' so to speak, and that he must observe and not involve himself in sociable activities. He hasn't made the first move in any of the significant relationships in his life. When his mother died he was seventeen, and had been living by himself for a year before I found him. He knew where I lived, but he didn't seek out my help even though he desperately wanted it. I think," he says thoughtfully as they move into the small foyer and Arthur bends over to put on his trainers, "that if someone were about to die and Merlin could save them that he wouldn't even risk his comfort zone to do so."

Arthur freezes with his hand wrapped around his ankle and his backside spooned against a velvet chair back, trainer in hand and a prickling sensation running down his neck.

Merlin had saved him _twice._ Once, with the cars, and then again, just now with the staircase.

Did that mean anything?

"Not that he's a selfish boy," Gaius rushed on, sensing Arthur's tension and assuming it was directed at his personality sketch of Merlin. "He's very good to me, visits me four times a week and runs errands and such, bakes a plum pudding every Christmas, puts a little whiskey in the sauce even though the doctors say I can't have it…he's just _Merlin,_ if you understand."

Arthur nods because Gaius is expecting him too, but he doesn't wholly comprehend what the elderly man is saying. He is still trying to understand why Merlin Emrys keeps preserving his image and his life.

Arthur's a _nobody._

So…why?

**

* * *

17.38**

Merlin doesn't go home. He goes to Hyde Park and sits on a bench, pulling his knees to his shoulders and embracing them against his chest. He rests his head between them and watches the gray January rainclouds scudding over an equally gray dense overhang, thinking about _Arthur._

Someone once told him that every person has a destiny, a life predicted in the stars and meant to be.

"_It's like meeting someone in a random stream of events, you know? And getting that feeling…like you belong somewhere, that special _closeness_ that you feel….And then meeting that person again and again until you stay together. It's the stars pushing you together, Merlin."_

He wonders if it's true.

He and Arthur.

They?

**

* * *

17.57**

Pendragon Inc. is located in the financial district of London. It's one of those tall buildings on the A 1211 that are completely overshadowed by the Gherkin but you would sorely miss if you didn't see it on your daily pilgrimage to Aldgate Station. Arthur can see it through the smudged bus window, its sharp outline cutting through the late afternoon haze.

His fingers tighten involuntarily around the plastic bars of the luggage platform in front of him. The dark red sunset glinting in that familiar window, in _his_ window, the penthouse office—it stabs through him like only sour memories can. He _worked_ for that office, worked damn well harder than Mordred had worked a day in his life. Arthur worked for everything he ever had, worked for his mother's happiness, worked for his father's love, worked for the success of his company, and what did he have to show for it? A scratched cello that can sing like a siren or screech like a banshee, ridiculously hard calluses on his left hand fingertips, an empty white apartment, and a hollowness in his chest that he keeps denying.

The bus swerves slightly and Arthur's cello bumps against his clenched fingers, reminding him that he has something, even if it's just _one _thing that he sometimes hates but could never quit. He rests a hand on it and lets his head drop against the filthy window, shutting his eyes to the piercing glare of the life he misses more fiercely than he's willing to admit.

**

* * *

November 24 2009, 9.36**

The camera is good to Arthur's face.

Merlin holds the print away from himself, against a sunlit window. Light candles through the image, softening the black and bleeding through the white. He traces the air in front of it; the faint line of Arthur's cheekbones, his sharp, thin nose, the soft dip of his brow and the budding swell of his lips.

The photograph is slightly out of focus in a way that Merlin instantly adores, fuzzing out the background and drawing attention to Arthur's clear, intense eyes. They are clear and direct, slightly narrowed in concern but glassy with shock, lashes flickering upwards and shot with light. His full lips are pursed and open as he speaks, elongating his face and accentuating the line of his jaw. His hair fans around his face, a light, filtered gray, and a halo of pure white surrounds his form.

Merlin feels his heart give a frantic beat, thudding against his ribs before turning restlessly in its flesh confines. He raises a hand to his cheek as his eyes continue to stroke over Arthur's face.

His camera could fall in love with a face like that.

Perhaps he could, too.

**

* * *

November 29 2009, 15.29**

Arthur already expects it, before he even enters Gaius' apartment the last week of November and sees the combat boots lined up with his music teacher's appallingly hideous loafers, that Merlin will be there waiting for him. He is right, of course, and nods to the dark-haired man as they pass on the stairs again. He sees Merlin's hands go to his camera, but there is no flash so he assumes his ascending back will be spared from paparazzi for the day.

Gaius appears to be suppressing a smile as Arthur unpacks, pressing a gnarled hand subtly to his mouth as he watches his student with twinkling eyes. Arthur's skin prickles under his unwavering gaze, and he slams down his rock stop with unnecessary force.

"What?" he asks irritably, spreading a book of etudes over the shelf of his low music stand.

The old man shakes his head and turns to the piano, cracking his knuckles with a loud crunch that makes Arthur twitch. "Nothing, I've just spent an hour with a _very_ agitated Merlin."

Arthur runs his bow over a block of rosin suspiciously. "Oh."

There is a moment of tense silence.

"And…?"

"He's taken quite a shining to you, I think," Gaius says, and _yes,_ the old bastard is smiling like a happy matchmaker! "Doesn't say a thing while he's here, just some empty words to be polite, and then the door opens and he's up like a rocket. Did he have any business with you?"

"None," Arthur says with finality and plucks a string. "My G is flat."

Gaius gives him the note and they begin the lesson, but Arthur is still filled with an uncomfortable feeling that he's going to be seeing a lot of the enigmatic Merlin in his near future.

* * *

**November 30 2009, 8.16**

Merlin is more than surprised when he sees Arthur on his daily run to Costa. The man is tapping the fingers of one hand on the counter while he leans into the palm of another, idly reading the names of different blends of equally abysmal coffee that are announced colorfully above the counter.

"What in the world is anAmericano? Is it as tactless as the country?" he's saying, launching the eager girl behind the counter into a stunted, overly energetic speech about espresso and water and milk while Arthur's eyes have already slipped to the next item. Merlin didn't know that coffee could be tactless, but he likes the phrase.

He makes eye contact with Gwen, another employee and one of his best friends, who smiles broadly in recognition before turning to prepare his daily ristretto.

Merlin fishes a twenty pound note out of his trouser pockets and waves it at the girl working the cash register. "Sorry, Morg, I'm out of change."

"Spent it all on prostitutes, did you, Merlin?" his other best friend Morgana says as she opens the cashbox with a flourish and a 'ding!' Gwen, dripping a precise amount of soya milk into Merlin's coffee, lets out a little gasp of shock and flings Morgana a hard look over her shoulder.

"Oh, definitely," he confirms with a smirk, happily falling into the easy banter he shares only with the two of them. "Only blondes, of course. I'm a highly selective lover."

"How about this one?" Morgana says with a jerk of her head, and Merlin remembers that Arthur is a foot behind him. His cheeks flush in embarrassment. "He's _fit_, Mer, look!"

"Mor_gana_!" Gwen hisses, sensing his discomfort. She plucks Merlin's change from Morgana's hand and presses it and his coffee against his chest. "Sorry, love, she's in an interfering mood."

Arthur is staring at him, his eyes narrowed and his lips twitching in irritation. "Are you really stalking me, then, Merlin Emrys?" he asks evenly, accepting his flat white without turning away.

Morgana nudges Gwen's side with force enough to shove her into the froth machine, her heavily made-up eyes flashing in excitement.

"I come here every day," Merlin says uncertainly, looking to his friends for backup. Gwen nods vigorously, her eyes wide and her hands fluttering against her uniform. Morgana just pops her gum and leers at Arthur, who backs up a bit and looks severely uncomfortable.

Arthur nods, takes a sip of his coffee, and then pats his legs in what Merlin is beginning to recognize is a sign of discomfort in social situations. "Oh," he says awkwardly, and glances around. "Ah. I'll be seeing you soon, then. Er…."

With that, Arthur rushes neatly from the coffee shop and down the busy street, his steps stiff and his back straight.

Merlin, Gwen, and Morgana look after him in collective confusion; Merlin's cheeks are still a flaming red.

Morgana is first to recover. She whirls to focus her best glare at him, red lips pouting in frustration. "You _met_ someone? And you didn't tell me! Merlin Emrys!"

"He seemed…nice," Gwen says carefully, unnecessarily taking a scrub cloth to the clean countertop.

"He was a total ass," Morgana snarls, and dings her register again, this time for fun, it appears.

Merlin shrugs helplessly, unwilling to speak against Arthur but unwilling to speak for him. He takes a sip of his ristretto to cover his rising panic and grimaces with excessive drama. "Bleh. I might go back to Americanos tomorrow, Gwen."

"Two and a half seconds of milk," she says immediately, still wiping at the counter restlessly.

"But they're so _tactless,_" Morgana mutters, shooting a look at Merlin that tells him she knows what he's up to_, _and she's not letting him off the hook until he enlightens her. He swallows his (tactless) coffee in a painfully abrupt gulp and cringes away from her.

He can't help it. He doesn't want to gush about Arthur like he normally does when he feels attracted to people. Arthur feels…different. To bring their nonexistent relationship into the light would seem a bit premature and _jinxing_.

_Destiny._

Maybe. They both drink bad coffee, evidently. That must count for something.

* * *

**Yay for Gwen and Morgana! Though I'm afraid they don't get nearly as much spotlight as they should...I may write more of them into the future chapters if they don't mess up the flow ^_^**

**Someone asked me how many chapters I was anticipating this to have, but I can only give a rough estimate. I'd say between 6 and 8 to go-depending on how much I add to the second half (which I feel is a bit lacking in the angst LOL)**

**Oh, I'd also like to shamelessly and prematurely advertise the fic I am currently writing with Love is a strange thing (do we ever do anything apart from each other, you ask? The answer is technically yes, though what time I spend away from her I spend with her sister, so I think the facts are debatable...). It takes place in NYC; Arthur is a (tentative) writer who suffers from insomnia, Gwen is a pianist on the floor below him, Morgana is a woman of mysterious career (wink wink) on the floor above, and Arthur's new neighbor Merlin is a young Russian prodigy from the Vaganova dance academy. Thoughts?**

**I promise to get the next part of MFB up ASAP (ugggh...I just want to get Merlin out of the ocean so the fun can begin _). If my account goes dead for a week or so, it's safe to believe that I've (a) failed Chemistry, or (b) the tornado that is supposed to blow through my town tonight (WTF, tornado, it's FUGGIN NOVEMBER) has killed us all. 'Ta!**

******xoxo Ally**  



	5. Chapter 5

**Damn, this is long. Makes up for absence of update on MFB? Eh heh heh...**

**SORRY. I have walking pneumonia DX**

**I was listening to 'Hot Mess' by Cobra Starship while I edited, so if the tone is messed up I'm very very sorry :P**

* * *

**6 December 2009, 15.24**

Merlin visits Gaius again under the premise of bringing early Christmas pudding. His uncle raises his eyebrow but waves Merlin into his music room without question. They talk but _don't_ talk as the minutes tick by, and when the front door creaks open with much foot-stomping and huffing Merlin stands abruptly, breaking off in the middle of his sentence and striding eagerly to the door.

"Merlin," Gaius calls, and he turns back.

The old man is touching the piano with a disturbingly innocent expression on his lined face. "My hands aren't doing so well today, would you mind playing the piano for my student, just this once?"

Merlin hesitates, his hand on the frame of the door, before glancing at the sheet music laid out. His fingers stir the air as he tests his ability, and then he moves to sit gingerly on the soft leather seat. He passes his camera to Gaius before he coaxes out a scale, tries to put emotion into it. He has never been able to make the piano _speak_ like his photographs do.

Feet pound on the staircase, and Arthur bursts into the room, cello clutched awkwardly to his chest and eyes roving around the room. They focus on Merlin and Arthur smiles…smugly?

"Ha! I knew you'd be here," he says, pointing a finger at Merlin and slamming his fist down on his jutting hip. Merlin is a bit shell shocked. He looks at Gaius in momentary frustration and then turns back to his keys.

"Merlin's helping me with my lessons today," the elderly musician lies smoothly. "My hands, you know…." They twist forlornly in his lap.

Arthur nods, still boring his gaze into Merlin's back. "Ah. He plays piano, too."

"No, I _don't_," Merlin argues stubbornly, pressing down a key with a petulant grimace.

Arthur shrugs and tightens his bow.

Gaius sits back in his chair with a slight smile as Arthur tunes sourly to Merlin's gentle notes. His grin widens as two begin the play. Arthur is working on an intermediate piece now_, _and what he remembers of Merlin's soft piano fits in perfectly with his student's tender bow. The house fills with music, and Arthur's eyes flicker to Merlin's back as he plays, flashing with brief interest before darting back to the open score before him.

Arthur has trouble with a shift about halfway through the song, and Merlin holds out his notes while he waits and breathes deeply through the counts, leaning into the music when Arthur joins him again.

It's by no means perfect; Merlin has a tendency to drop his notes heavily like freezing rain, and Arthur in turn plays with far too much artistic license, taking a tenuto wherever he pleases and making up for impromptu ritardandos with random accelerandos. Gaius winces a bit as the men duel momentarily for control of the music, but finds that together their music is very pleasing. He raises a hand to support his cheek as Arthur falls back into a delicate, swelling pianissimo and Merlin holds his notes out accordingly.

At some point Merlin begins to relax over the keys, and he's rocking to the ebb of the tides of notes, his shell dropping a bit to Arthur's coaxing music. Gaius holds his breath as he stirs the keys with his fingertips, and then his nephew is touching them with nearly as much adoration as he does his camera.

Arthur's eyes are closed now as he ignores the composer's instructions and uses the template of the composition for his own purposes. He imagines an orchestra around him, their sweet tones filling in when he falls back as Merlin is doing now.

Merlin's eyes are open but his thoughts are equally as far away. He is constructing a photograph in his mind, something that would suit this stirring piece, something soft and emotional and just a bit desperate. He leans his head back, his lips parting as the music grows unbearably sweet, and there is a quiet flash that neither of the playing men notice.

The cello sings the last note, a warbling sob that fades into a broken sigh, and Merlin's hand spreads the final chord into a loving caress. The silence afterwards is deafening, hands held hovering over instruments and heads bent over them.

Gaius breaks the spell of the music with harsh, staccato claps that startle Merlin to his feet. He turns to look at Arthur but never makes it, stopping the curve of his neck with a jerk and reaching out to his uncle for his camera instead. The elderly man passes it to him with a smile that can only be described as self-satisfied.

"I'll bring you some liquor next week, Gaius, if you promise not to tell the nurse," Merlin says quietly, not looking at Arthur as he stumbles clumsily from the room and pounds crazily down the stairs.

Arthur stares after him, then at Gaius, his brow drown in a comically perplexed frown. "What is _with_ that kid?"

* * *

**7 December 2009, 13.09**

He ought to be furious, but of course he's not—how could he be?

It seems that Gaius used his camera—_used his camera!—_when he was playing with Arthur. Merlin _hates_ it when people touch his camera…he gave Morgana a black eye the time she got him drunk and used the flash to wake him up.

And yet….

He _loves_ this photograph.

Gaius is no photographer, so the focus is very, very, off. Instead of ruining the image in Merlin's eyes, though, the blurred quality almost enhances it. Sunlight filters into the small room from the window opposite Gaius and the viewer, coloring half of Arthur's profile a bright gray and shading the other half dark. His cello leans forward, his torso pushing it into the light, and his slightly pouted lips are framed black against white. Merlin didn't realize how close they actually were, Arthur's extended arm nearly brushing his back in the cramped space of the music room when he leans away from the piano. His own head is tilted back, face shadowed and parted lips a shade darker than the sunlight. The piano stool is tipped slightly so that his long legs can work the pedals easily, and his right hand reaches for a high note, close to the camera, while his left spans across the white keys like a Chinese fan.

He slips it into the dark blue portfolio that contains _Carrying On_ and the newer piece he's titled _Falling_. Taking up his felt-tipped pen, he rips a square of Sellotape from the roll on his wrist and sticks it over the tabs meant to hold expensive papyrus labels. He scrolls_ Melody_ on the strip in his tight, looping hand that no one but his mother and Gwen can read.

Merlin swallows.

Just Gwen, now, with his mother gone.

He flicks through the three images impatiently, and realizes with a giddy little twitch that he _has_ to photograph Arthur again, and again, and more still.

He's found a new muse.

* * *

**13 December 2009, 17.25**

"You want to _what_?"

Arthur stares at Merlin Emrys in incredulity. The tall, dark-haired man shifts awkwardly under his gaze and twists his camera in his hands. "I want to photograph you. R—regularly. Please?"

He…_what_?

Merlin is red-cheeked and miserable looking, wringing his hand around the damn camera and stealing little glances at Arthur through his thick eyelashes. Arthur swallows. He _hasn't_ noticed, he definitely hasn't, but Merlin is sort of handsome in his own weird, elfin way.

"What's in it for me?" he asks suspiciously, leaning against the wall of Gaius' minute vestibule and feeling that it really is _far too small_, especially with Merlin's nervous energy taking up most of the space.

Merlin seems to relax now that Arthur appears to be considering it. "I'll pay you. Working salary? Gaius says you don't have a job."

Arthur almost snorts. He realizes that Merlin has no idea who he is—more fairly, who he _was_. He feels the strangest urge to pour his life out to this beanstalk with tragic ears and outdated Paul McCartney hair. "I don't really need money, _Mer_lin."

The camera falters in its twisting course between Merlin's hands, and his limpid blue eyes snap up to Arthur's. The room is suddenly far, far, _far_ too small and hot as the fires of hell, and Arthur feels himself flushing darkly. Merlin's throat bobs in a mesmerizing fashion, and Arthur's eyes are trapped on its smooth length.

He jerks into awareness and lunges past Merlin, throwing the heavy door open and swinging his cello onto his back. His feet stop him at the top of the stairs, and he rips an old grocery list from his pocket.

"Pen?" he asks, reaching into the house.

Merlin blinks, then his hands are scrabbling in his thin, flat bag and holding a smudged felt-tip pen that shakes madly in his fingers. Arthur manages to take it without touching anything but the pen and scrawls his mobile number over _Spread, Beans, Eggs, Soy Sauce_ and shoves it into Merlin's chest before flying down the steps and rounding the corner in a manner of seconds. He stops there, grips his cello between his thighs and rests his head against the rough brick wall.

What the _fuck_?

* * *

**20 December 2009, 17.56**

Merlin doesn't let his chance slip by, and calls Arthur the next day. They agree to meet in the park, where Merlin instructs him to do various things with his hands or his neck while he hems and haws and takes sporadic photographs. It's irritating and enjoyable at the same time, and when Arthur returns home he finds his stomach clenching in anticipation of seeing the results.

There's a manila envelope with the date of the shoot written on it waiting for him at Gaius', but no Merlin. Arthur can hardly focus through the lesson, and Gaius lets him out early with a wrinkle of his nose and an eyebrow raised in amused confusion.

Arthur darts to his corner alley and slides down against the cold marble, tucking his knees under the warmth of his trenchcoat as he thumbs the clasp off of the envelope. A half-dozen shots fall into his lap and he eagerly lifts the first for inspection.

This is _not_ a pose. This is Arthur stretching, his sweater sleeves rolled to his elbows and his back half-turned to the camera, mouth open as if he's speaking and his eyes gazing lazily over the empty park. The muscles in his back are almost visible, as if his thick sweater is actually paper thin. It's oddly beautiful.

The next is another non-pose. He is laughing, holding his hand out in a 'stop' gesture to the camera as he throws his head back. He remembers—this was when Merlin had laid a thick Scottish accent over his easy Irish lilt, and the result had Arthur in near-spasms for minutes when Merlin wouldn't stop talking silly.

He realizes that none of the photographs are of the poses Merlin made him do. This strikes him as very odd, but then….

The poses weren't really Arthur being _Arthur._

And isn't that why Merlin hired him?

* * *

**17 January 2010, 10.27**

_Unknown Caller._

Arthur curses loudly, glaring at the phone as he lays down his bow and swipes a hand over his sweaty forehead. "Why, always when I'm _busy_…?"

He shoves his mobile between his ear and his shoulder and crosses the empty, white room to pull his brown loafers on, clicking the speak button with the edge of his jaw. "What?"

"We're doing a shoot today." Merlin is more confident over the phone, his voice imposing and excited and only a bit shaky. "Where are you?"

"Where are _you_?" Arthur counters, already shrugging into his coat. For some reason he's a bit too eager to shoot with Merlin again.

"Er…."

"I hear Indie music. Are you in Soho?"

"I think I…oh! It's Trafalgar Square…."

Arthur snickers. "Right. Okay, don't move. Go take pictures of some pigeons or something—I'm going to come over."

"Well, hurry up, then. All these birds are looking at me funny."

Arthur takes the underground to Covent Garden, and the first thing he sees in Trafalgar Square is a knot of people surrounding a body lying at the foot of Nelson's Column. He realizes with a sick drop to his stomach that the body has large ears and dark hair, and he pushes the people aside, staring down at Merlin, whose eyes are shut tightly.

"Oy," he says, the arrogant tone of voice he uses to keep his shell up around Merlin slipping into shaking panic. "What the hell are you doing?"

Merlin, eyes closed and mouth slack, doesn't respond, and Arthur kicks him in the side.

"Ouch!"

Merlin glares up at him, and Arthur sighs in relief. "You idiot!" he snarls, hauling his photographer to his reluctant feet and dragging him away from the tourist infested square. "You can't take a nap on the pavement in a public place!"

"I wasn't napping! I was listening."

Arthur throws him a disbelieving glance. Most of the time, he doesn't understand Merlin at all.

Merlin blinks back with his tired blue eyes, and Arthur softens around the edges. "Where do you want to go?"

The softness bleeds into his question, and Merlin hides behind his camera. "Here is fine."

* * *

**18.10**

Merlin falls back onto his pillows with a smile.

The day has been…perfect.

_Arthur_ is perfect.

Merlin always falls hard, and he often falls fast, but he can't even remember falling for Arthur. It just…was.

Arthur knows nothing about him. It's not a truth that Merlin is willing to remedy—he's happy living in his bubble of self-imposed hermitism. Arthur doesn't seem to mind that Merlin is a walking enigma, a strange blend of habits and aversions and odd synecdoches that come together under the opaque shell of the past.

But every day Merlin knows more of Arthur. He knows from their first meeting, that almost-accident, _years_ before when Merlin was hardly nineteen and still riding the depression of his youth, that Arthur lived for his work. Not only lived for his work, but _feared it._ Those papers meant life or death to Arthur, not unlike Merlin's photographs that had drowned in the road. The photographs of his mother, the ones his father had taken. Merlin _feared_ the hobby that had taken his father away from his family, the hobby that had ruined his mother, the hobby that he couldn't _possibly_ survive without.

Even then, standing on the curb and wondering why he still was, he looked up through the rain and saw a man kneeling in the road before a _fucking car_ with the most peaceful expression on his face, and Merlin didn't even think. The connection he felt to that expression, the one he saw in the mirror so many times with the razor in his hand, easy acceptance of death, snapped him into action, snapped him into _Arthur, _and Merlin wonders if they weren't so different after all.

He knows from Arthur's continuing existence in the world, in _his_ world, that he wasn't an ender, not a quitter, not a ruined man. Merlin had smiled then, seeing this man on the bench, happy to know that he kept on surviving. He sat on the bench and shared his misery and his awful coffee, laced with the bitterness of frozen pasts. Again he felt that connection, sharp like a knife, and he wanted it for himself. Wanted it in his hands, so he captured it. Having the image of it, of Arthur's singularity, only made him want to know _more._

So: he knows from hearing Arthur's playing that he found another reason to live. He knows that Arthur's life is now composed of music the way Merlin's is wrapped in film, and he knows that Arthur makes him play piano like his uncle had wanted him too all his life—with the same care he takes his photographs.

He knows that he's titled all the photographs he's taken since they began shooting 'Arthur,' and _Arthur_ is what they are, because the shoot is just a ruse to learn more about this man who carries on. The frames between the frames Arthur _thinks_ they're shooting are the frames he wants, those only, and they tell him more than words ever could.

From those photographs, he knows that Arthur is burying something too.

Merlin has a theory. His theory is that everyone has a past they're running from.

He has yet to be proven wrong.

* * *

**3 May 2010, 23.09**

Arthur doesn't know when it happened.

There was a point—surely, there was—when he ceased to be annoyed at the _Unknown Caller_, a point when said unknown caller became _Merlin_, a point when _Arthur _was the one doing the calling.

Arthur enters into a new stage of his life where everything is quieter and brighter and clearer and he knows that he is seeing through Merlin's lens, through Merlin's eyes. It's a blurred time, a period stitched from walks in the park with Merlin falling out in the middle of a sentence to photograph a leaf on the lake, a couple in a boat, Arthur's acquiescent smile; from ice creams at the docks and making music in the evening with the public pianos on the wharf and the sunset melting into the murky blue of the Thames; of illicit whiskey and laughter in Gaius' small kitchen; of bad coffee and two new friends: Morgana, who is violent and foxy and Gwen, who is soft and lovely and worries about Arthur as much as she does Merlin; of Merlin's slow, wide smile and Arthur's natural answering grin.

There is only one thing that bothers him in those months. Merlin is _hiding,_ and Arthur can feel precisely where the line is drawn, exactly when his friend ceases to tell the truth.

He tries not to pay it any mind, but sometimes Merlin is so sad it rips at Arthur's chest, and he wants to know: _why_?

Merlin is so different from the other people he knows. He feels through his eyes and speaks through his photographs and is incredibly afraid, and Arthur can't understand what of.

He _wants _to understand, but he's constantly shut out.

_Let me in…._

* * *

_Time is special._

_Time is measured and fleeting and so very, very finite. _

_The time from the start of something and the end of something is trapped between the two: beginning, end, and middle within. _

_Sometimes the beginning and the middle coincide, and the end is drawn out and painful. Sometimes all three happen at once and are over before they've properly begun. Sometimes it's impossible to tell when the three are happening, and the end comes before the beginning with the middle bringing up the rear._

_It scares him that you can never know when these three inevitable portions of time are happing, have happened, will happen. _

_He's forever being left in a swirl of sand in an hourglass, buried beneath it because he thinks it's only just begun to fall. He has no sense of direction, no internal compass that leads him on a steady course. Has no clock that tells him when, no alarm that warns him of the future, no measurement of the days, hours, minutes, seconds slipping by, the fractions of his life left for him to enjoy._

_So he takes photographs. He captures his world so that when it is over he can piece it back together in proper chronological order and find where, exactly, everything went wrong._

* * *

**_You think you're hot shit, oooh I love it, I loooove it._**

**Oooh, things are getting heavy here, and is Merlin revealing something about himself like you've all been badgering me to do? Eh heh.**

_**I'm like, HOT DAMN, let me make you my boo, cos you can shake it, shake it, shake it, yeah you know what to do-you're a hot mess, I'm loving it, HELL YES.**_

**More MFB when I can force myself to carry on with it...eurgh.**

**xoxo Ally (cough cough cough wheeeeze)**


	6. Chapter 6

**Here comes the part I'm a bit cautious about. It went under massive reconstruction this morning and I'm a bit iffy about it...But it's so necessary to my story :/**

**I love you all :) your reviews keep me writing!**

* * *

**14 May 2010, 16.23**

Merlin's house is the exact opposite of Arthur's. It's small where his is large, and it's dark where his is bright. The walls are a deep brown, the carpet off-cream, and there only appear to be a few rooms. Everything is covered in dense clutter of all sorts. Arthur explores while Merlin makes the tea, hoping that he can figure something about his eccentric friend through the way he lives.

The first room to his left immediately after entering is a cramped little study acting as a living room. The walls are lined in lengths of string that Merlin has clipped a bunch of random photographs to. An old leather couch is backed against the radiator in a way that most probably defies every law of fire safety, squeezed between two holey armchairs and opposite an absolutely crammed bookcase. The top shelf is filled with thick, ancient books contrasting horribly with the full set of the _Harry Potter_ series alongside them. The middle shelf has dainty wire trays buried under stacks of lined paper, all covered in curly, illegible handwriting. The bottom shelf holds a number of slim, dark-colored albums.

The kitchen is attached to the study, and Arthur smiles as Merlin, holding a package of biscuits between his teeth, makes futile attempts to boil water on a grease-rusted stove. A quick glance around the room shows that Merlin is rather accustomed to having company: the table has four chairs grouped around it and one set of untouched dishes laid on one of the placemats opposite another set of what was, prior to eating, some kind of pasta. Arthur makes a face. Merlin is messy.

At the end of the hall there is a bedroom with walls of light blue and a window with a view of Merlin's small yard, which contains a clothes horse, a red and white pendant left over from the World Cup, and a somewhat deflated football. The bed is unmade—or rather, made up very carefully into a sort of nest, the cream-colored duvet forming a mountain around a small, round hole where Merlin must sleep in a fetal position. Surrounding the volcano of bedclothes are various knick-nacks: a mug with a blue TARDIS on it, a set of keys hooked rather unconventionally to a bike lock, a ratty teddy-bear, a few ink cartridges, several rolls of film, a dictionary, and a laptop, all partially buried in the folds of the blankets. Merlin is _very_ messy.

Arthur leaves Merlin's bedroom, kicking the t-shirt that somehow adhered to him between the window and the door off of the toe of his trainer before he shuts the door behind him. The first door on the other side is locked, and the acrid stench surrounding it tells Arthur that it's more than likely a converted dark room.

The last door he opens leads to a small lavatory. The walls are a horrible white, frightening under the brightness of the single light bulb hanging above. The mirror makes him uneasy, as does the black tile floor. The bathtub is simple and white with little ceramic oxlips winding around its feet. The toilet is ancient and still has the lever hanging on a chain from the tank, mounted on the wall at level with the top of the mirror. The whole room generally gives Arthur the shivers.

Arthur retreats from the scary loo, retracing his steps to the study/living room. He pulls an album—portfolio—from the bookcase and settles himself on the end of the couch that appears the most worn. The portfolio is titled 'Hunith,' and Arthur strokes his fingers over the cracked leather cover before opening it carefully.

He gets one short glimpse of a shell-shocked woman with flyaway hair and a fragile smile before the book is ripped from his hands. Arthur looks up in shock, and Merlin curls his arms around the portfolio, keeping his eyes on the floor as he crosses to the bookcase and slides it carefully back into place. He crouches in front of the bookcase for a moment, touching the albums with soft fingers, before turning back to Arthur.

"Tea's ready," he says flatly, his voice blank but his eyes quivering with emotion. "It's in the kitchen."

Arthur nods cautiously, falling into step behind Merlin.

The dark-haired man—every time he thinks Merlin's hair is black the sun comes out and he wonders if it's a very, very dark chocolate brown—keeps his arms wound against his chest, and he skirts around the lavatory door with a little lurch of his knee.

They drink tea in silence, and then Merlin begins clearing up and very politely and very quietly asks Arthur if he'll leave now, please, because he has a lot to do in the evening. When Arthur lets himself out, he glances back into the kitchen. Merlin leans into the sink, one hand braced on the counter and the other pressing into his eyes. Pain. Merlin is in pain. Arthur starts to go to him, but his resolve falters and instead he hurries out the door. The afternoon sun glints in the windows of Merlin's ground floor flat and flash on the pavement as Arthur walks quickly to the nearest underground station.

It's mid-May, but Regents Canal looks cold that.

* * *

**15 May 2010 20.58**

Arthur calls, but Merlin doesn't pick up.

* * *

**16 May 2010 11.26**

"_Merlin? _Mer_lin? Where is your sorry, scrawny little arse? I had to take _myself_ on a walk today, my God. I need you to convince Gaius that I'm ready for the Dvorak. You know I am, right? Call me, Emrys!"_

* * *

**17 May 2010 08.46**

Merlin's house is dark. Arthur wades through the bushes and presses his face against the dirty glass of the front window, but he can't see an honest thing. He knocks on the door for a while and then just sits on the front steps, staring at the sky and shivering for no reason.

* * *

**12.51**

"_Gorgeous,_ calm yourself."

Arthur isn't entirely comfortable with Morgana calling him that, but he appreciates the affectionate tone to her voice all the same. He shouldn't be as stressed out as he is, but Merlin is fucking_ gone_ and it's been three days since they've spoken and Arthur is one hundred percent positive that something _he_ said tipped Merlin off into the horrible lands of depression, and _God,_ what if he's dead on the floor of his kitchen because he took a pair of shears to his chest?

Gwen pets his hair and his shoulders and generally any part of him she can reach, and he's noticed her doing this to Merlin so he thinks she's mothering him so that she doesn't worry about her absent duckling. "Have some coffee, love, and don't freak out. He'll be back, I mean, he always comes back."

Arthur sips his ristretto and winces from the flavor and the underlying hint of _Merlin_ in its scent. "I'm not freaking out, I'm just mildly frazzled. Leave me alone, both of you."

Morgana squeezes his hand tightly and lays her dark head on his shoulder, blinking in an unintentionally whorish fashion from beneath her thick eyelashes. "Hey. Relax. Gwen's right. There was really no need to run crying to us. We already assumed Merlin had gone off when he didn't come for his daily coffee and Fay dosage. And listen to me when I say he _does_ this sometimes."

Gwen nods emphatically from her perch on one of the fake posh/leather chairs at Costa Coffee. The girls have left off work to sit with him while he calms himself, and Arthur's head is spinning because he's so obscurely confused.

Has it really come down to this? Can he not function without Merlin there? All Arthur can think about is Merlin, Merlin, Merlin, and he feels embarrassed and lonely and rejected and desperately angry all at once.

He crumples the cardboard espresso cup between his palms and watches the sludgy liquid splatter over the floor. Morgana sighs and trudges away to find a mop and Gwen stops petting Arthur in favor of hugging him as tightly as she can.

The thick coffee looks like blood.

* * *

**13.07**

"Gwen, Gwen—don't you have a key to Merlin's?"

"Er….No, I don't."

"Gwen! What if he's sick or something? We need to check on him."

"Arthur…."

* * *

**18 May 2010**

"_Oi. You seriously need to call me. I tried to get Gwen to give me that key you gave her but she acted like she didn't have one. I presume you know that I'm serious when I say I'll break into your house with a crowbar if I have to? Call."_

"_Merlin! It's Morg. Where the fuck are you? Do call back or I'll charge you double next time you bring yourself here. Fucking prick. No, I love you, but seriously! What the hell are you doing out there?"_

"_Hi! Er…that was loud. Merlin, it's Gwen. We're all really worried about you! I went to your flat yesterday but the doors were all locked and it was dark…sorry, I haven't lost the key you gave me but I didn't want to use it if you were avoiding us for a reason…it's not something I've done? Is it? It's Gwen, by the way. Oh, ring me, please."_

* * *

**19 May 2010**

"_It's Arthur. What the fuck? It's been four days. Call me!"_

"_Merlin, _please_."_

"_Merlin. It's Arthur. Call."_

* * *

**21 May 2010**

"_Fuck it all, where in the world are you? It's Arthur, but don't bother calling me, because I know you won't. Jesus…."_

"_Goddamn it!"_

* * *

**To: **Arthur, Morgana!, Gwen Smithson

**From:** Merlin Emrys

**Date: **22 May 2010 16:37

**Subject:** _{no subject}_

Calm down. I went home for the week. Morgana, I'm trying to break the coffee addiction. Gwen, you can fucking _live_ here if you want. Use the damn key.

And Arthur, I have never had that many messages on my mobile. I'll visit later today.

You lot. Christ.

-light and shadow

.

**New message! **

**Message Arthur:**

come over.

.

**New message! **

**Message Merlin Emrys:**

on my wy; undrgnd slow

.

**New message! **

**Message Arthur:**

walk then, lazy fucker.

.

**New message! **

**Message Merlin Emrys:**

cant, fat americns blocking oxford st

.

**New message! **

**Message Arthur:**

eat them.

.

**New message! **

**Message Merlin Emrys:**

2 much trans fats

.

**New message! **

**Message Merlin Emrys:**

let me in.

* * *

**22 May 2010, 21.37**

The door opens with impassioned violence and Merlin feels his ribs crack as Arthur wraps him in a painfully tight hug.

"I hate you, bastard!" Arthur gasps, half-serious, and Merlin melts into the embrace.

A few moments later Arthur pulls away gruffly, frowning at Merlin and slamming the door behind him. "It's too damn hot for that scarf," he mutters, and scruffs his hair awkwardly as Merlin removes his shoes and coat.

"You missed me," Merlin observes, no hint of emotion in his voice but his eyes warming the faintest bit.

Arthur shakes his head stupidly and gestures at nothing and Merlin gives him such a broken little smile that Arthur's heart fractures. He puts a tentative hand on Merlin's shoulder, and it shakes beneath his touch. Merlin appears to fight against something momentarily, and then he is crying in heaving, gasping sobs and falling into desperation, falling into Arthur, and Arthur holds him and it's strange and awkward and it _hurts_, but he's not going to let go.

* * *

**29 May 2010, 19.52**

Some things really are inevitable.

The sun is always going to rise, and it's always going to set again after that. Things in motion will have a rebound. A drunken Morgana will try to hook up with every living thing in sight. At some point in the year, Gwen will most definitely lose her Oyster card.

So it's perfectly inevitable when it happens. How could it _not_ happen?

Sitting on Merlin's front porch eating jam on crackers, they watch a bird take off from the tree at the corner, and just as the _inevitable_ sunset begins Arthur Pendragon _inevitably _leans a bit to the left and kisses Merlin Emrys, careful and determined, a brush of lips against the corner of a shocked mouth.

And it's inevitable that Merlin lets him.

* * *

**PHWOAR OMG. That was difficult to write. Such tedium! Such angst! **


	7. Chapter 7

**_Here comes the slash here comes the slash (HEY there, baby, baby! You are my...whatever.)_**

**Eeep! This chapter comes with warnings! Do not read if you have an issue with two boys kissin' and snugglin', though I promise nothing I write will ever be graphic and hopefully it's done tastefully enough so as not to offend. Also, there is a section (in _italics!_) that has to do with self-mutilation (in the past-it's a memory, don't be confused!****)-under no circumstances do I endorse it, it's all a part of Merlin's road to recovery...**

**

* * *

29 May 2010, 20:03**

Fingers play against his temples, stroking the flushed skin of his cheeks and tangling in his hair. Merlin sighs and lets Arthur press him against the door, gently and firmly, so heavy and perfect and so incredibly _Arthur_.

Merlin has thought about Arthur's mouth often in the past few months, how it would feel, how he would taste, how their lips would touch, soft like a butterfly, and how the world would fall into place around them.

He never expected it to be like this.

Arthur's kiss is soft and searching and oddly clinical, as if he is using Merlin as an experiment in a laboratory. Merlin realizes then that Arthur has never been with a man, never really passed that stage of schoolboy awkwardness and dares in the locker room. Normally he is disgusted when men treat him like this, as a test of orientation. But this is Arthur, and Merlin will let Arthur learn before he is taught.

His hands rest lightly on Arthur's chest, curling against the fabric of his t-shirt as he holds himself still for Arthur's Kiss.

He opens his heavy eyes, just to watch. His whispery breath catches as it slips between the gaps in the kiss, and his heart skips a bit in his tight chest. Arthur's eyes are shut, softly, long lashes beating like the wings of a hummingbird, beating like his heart beneath Merlin's fingers. His brow is drawn as brows are often drawn, in earnest, and Arthur breathes a word that Merlin feels more than hears, and it is his name:

"_Mer_lin..."

Merlin shakes. His fingers contract against Arthur's heart, pressing against it, pouring himself into it.

"Ar..."

Arthur steals the word from his lips. Merlin shudders against him, and he can't take any more of this or he's going to die, right there against the door with Arthur's hands on either side of his head. He draws away, but Arthur presses his cheek to Merlin's fluttering pulse and breathes sweetly into the hair curling against his ear. His broad hand smoothes over Merlin's shoulder and down his arm, pausing there. It plays idly with his fingers and strokes over his hot palm before slipping under the sleeve of his shirt with the barest of brushes.

Merlin gasps and jerks away, crossing his wrists against his chest. Arthur reaches for him, but Merlin holds him back with his posture. Arthur falters, his hooded eyes widening and then falling in a strange emotion. He stumbles away, turning from Merlin as his back gives a jerky shiver.

Merlin drops to his knees, his fingers frantically tracing the scars of his past like a rosary. He watches Arthur shake, the planes of his back calling out to Merlin who cannot answer them. Merlin cringes against the wall, memories swirling before his eyes until he's eighteen again, left and abandoned and staring at the empty room around him with the slam of the closing door still echoing in the closed hall.

Merlin is suddenly cold.

_

* * *

The mirror frightens him._

_He no longer knows himself, the pasty haunted face with the dripping eyes and the frown slashing through his lips. He raises his hands before him, staring at their palms and the water running down his fingers. They tremble in the air, wavering like flames before his spinning head. _

_The light is blue and white and bright black around him, and he is afraid of it. He wants the dark and the peace, and he is so confused. He doesn't know how, but he's here, and this is where it will come to a close._

_The razor smiles cruelly in the light, smiles like the empty faces of the missing people who should have been there for him. He can't see them now, but he can feel them, whispering like gossamer threads against his skin, touching their cold hands to the bare skin of his back and stomach._

"_Why?" he asks, and speaking makes the world turn around him again. The blade shivers in his fingers and the first blood flows, heat spreading up his arm. He cries out silently, sagging against the painfully white counter._

_It doesn't hurt, but the warmth startles him. He expected it to be colder, colder than the frost that is his skin._

_He wants to feel, and the warmth curls in his chest. _

_His vision flickers and his hands falter against his skin. The pristine countertop is doused in red, the walls and floors and ceiling of blue and white and black closing around him like a cell. The mirror bends before him and he sees himself again, blue eyes and white skin and black hair, the colors of the cell he fears. The red should be a comfort but it makes him sick and he shakes in the mirror._

"_No," he breathes, the blade clattering to the floor and the red washing out his vision. He doesn't want this, doesn't want to feel, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't._

_There is dark, and it hurts him. _

_He thinks of his mother._

**

* * *

20.11**

Arthur breathes hard, his hands clutching his hair tightly as his shoulders heave.

He... and Merlin... and _then_….

Arthur can hardly think, standing there in Merlin's dark and cluttered study with the photographs hanging on hooks like blocks of meat in a carving shed.

He can hear his friend—and oh God, who is Arthur kidding with _friends_—crying, loud desperate sobs that make him feel guilty, uncomfortable, and strangely quivery all at once. He wants to comfort Merlin… no, he wants to leave… no, he wants to grab him and kiss him again, hard and demanding and _force_ some response out of him.

Arthur wants, but he doesn't know _what_ he wants.

The broken thoughts and Merlin's sobs bring him to the floor, and he falls forward until his forehead scrapes painfully against the knobbly carpet. His hands move from his hair to his eyes and then he is crying too, choking on silent, heaving gasps that wrack his frame and scrabble at his chest with sharp talons.

Why, why, _why_ is everything so damn complicated?

**

* * *

20.17**

Merlin hears Arthur leave, broad-shouldered and fair and bashful and ashamed and still coughing on his air as he dashes the wetness from his cheeks. Merlin doesn't move from his tight knot against the wall. The door shuts behind Arthur, and the last of the evening light escapes around the closing frame. Merlin stays on the floor, his hands clasped tightly to his chest and his knees drawn up to protect them.

Arthur leaves, and Merlin is left. Alone in the dark that he can't bring himself to chase away, though there is a light switch inches above his head.

Why do they always _leave_?

All he wants is for someone, somewhere, to love him enough to stay.

He can't speak the words, but he feels them all the same.

_Don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go._

**

* * *

1 June 2010, 15.29**

Arthur can't play.

The notes sit heavily in his stomach with the guilt and the fear, and he slams his fist into the wall as they pound in his sick head.

He can't do this.

He _can't._

**

* * *

2 June 2010, 23.49**

He can't do this.

He _can't._

He is afraid of the dark and the silence and he _steeps _himself in it because he is no longer comfortable with feeling safe. He could easily lose himself in the light and warmth, but he knows that when it's taken away from him again the brief exposure to color will make it so much harder to readjust to the monotonous grayscale of life.

When you let down your guard you get hurt.

* * *

_Missing someone hurts so fucking badly._

**

* * *

4 June 2010, 17.27**

**New message!**

**Message Merlin Emrys:**

where we had coffee.

**

* * *

17.56**

It's raining in the park. Merlin shivers on the bench where they met for the second time, his face turned sideways and hidden between his knees and his folded arms.

He hates the cold.

He's _always_ cold.

Icy water caresses his neck, slipping around the edges of his wool sweater and over his collarbones. The droplets on his face feel like tears.

He hears footsteps, not the rapid, quick shutter of a Londoner caught in the rain but the hesitant, dragging steps of someone caught between two hard scenarios . He drops his arm slightly, and there is Arthur, dark against the sky, his hair plastered to his forehead and his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. Merlin's breathing hitches, and he moves his trembling hands to cover his face as real tears join the ones made by the rain.

Arthur draws in a shaking breath, rustling as he sits next to Merlin. He folds his hands over and over again in his lap and his hair drips steadily onto their pale backs. Merlin shudders, the cold and the tears and the loneliness eating into his soul. He coughs through his silent tears, and Arthur shifts towards him.

"_Mer_lin…."

And he is being drawn against a chest, covered in a drenched trenchcoat that's freezing but _warm_ and _Arthur_ nonetheless. Arthur wraps his arms around Merlin and pulls his legs up onto the bench, trapping Merlin in his embrace and shielding him from the elements and the pain. Merlin cries and Arthur touches him softly at his back, his cold neck, his soaked hair.

They stay like this for some time, tangled on a park bench, before Arthur begins to shiver too. Merlin is led to Arthur's sterile apartment where the soaked trenchcoat stains the whiteness of the kitchen floor. He allows Arthur to strip him of his sweater and shirt, and then to gently tuck him into the large white bed. Arthur crawls in beside him and pulls him into his arms again, holding him there with his heat and his gentle hands and the soft words he whispers into Merlin's hair that mean nothing and everything at the same time.

Merlin is mumbling something into Arthur's damp shoulder, his lips moving against the skin like a fumbling kiss. A warm hand cups his jaw, slipping over his mouth so that Arthur can read the words that can't be said aloud just yet.

_Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave…._

"Never," Arthur promises.

Merlin's heart squeezes almost painfully. _I need you._

Fingers wrap around his wrist, stroking over the scars there. Merlin tenses, but he doesn't pull away. Not this time. "Yeah," Arthur says quietly to his hair. "I'm here."

Arthur explores the raised marks that brand Merlin with his pain, and the loving touch makes him feel like crying again. He does, just a bit, but Arthur catches his tears with his fingertips and dusts them away like the bad memories that they are.

"_Shh_..."

When he falls asleep, he is not alone for the first time in far too long.

* * *

**OH-HO. That could have been drawn out more, but I like my boys together, yup yup.**

**Well, I revealed a bit of Merlin's life for you all! MUAHAHAHAAH now you can stop BADGERING me about it! But seriously, never do. I love the badgering. Badger badger badger away!**

***Knits casually* It's a snow day today! It's hilarious how freaked people get about a two inches of snow in the Piedmont. In Montreal you go to school even when there's_ two feet_ of snow. American wusses...it's beside the point that I'm wearing about ten quilts and peering out at the snow with a frosty expression. Brrr.**

**One more day of Hell before the hols, here's hoping that there is a delayed opening tomorrow so that I won't have time to sit my exams! Pray with me!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Ridiculously short chapter, and so late, too! I'm so sorry! RL got me down, with exams and ice storms and pneumonia and all that jazz. BUT HERE we have a lovely flash-back chapter! Yay!**

**Some of you were a bit surprised by Arthur's big breakdown last chapter. I must blame the OOC bug for making him into a bit of a nancy-boy, but we must also remember that 1)Arthur's mum is dead; 2)Arthur's dad (who never loved him as well as he should have done) is as well, and 3)His little brother has severed ties. I imagine he's almost as tired of rejections as Merlin is, don't you?**

* * *

"_Mum is sad."_

_Will glances over at him, cross because Merlin is interrupting his computer game but worried all the same. "Merlin, your mum is _always_ sad. Thought you knew that, you great clot."_

_Merlin smiles half-heartedly into his knee. He's sixteen and it's six months before the sex and three before the kiss. He is in his best friend's bedroom which is really just the guest room in his own house, watching him kill aliens on the new computer he bought with his birthday money, and he's worrying about his mother. "She misses dad. A lot."_

_Will is seventeen and that ought to make him more mature but it really doesn't. "Hunith is fine, Merlin, and so are you. Now shut up and watch me kill this fucker."_

_Merlin smiles with a bit more surety. As long as Will's here, Hunith will be happy enough. She loves Will like another son._

* * *

"_Don't miss me too hard," Will says, and Merlin should've noticed that there's a funny tone to his voice. His smile is a lie but Merlin just smiles back, a bit sad but at the same time excited for his boyfriend. Will says he's got a new job working in an auto shop in Leeds. He says that he can get a flat and move out of Hunith's house, and Merlin can come too, and wouldn't that be lovely, living in a city? Hunith will be fine with the move, of course; she's got Gloria next door and the ladies at the church to keep her sound. Merlin is ready for a different world._

_He gives Will a kiss, laughing at the way his lips are suddenly enveloped in Will's wet mouth, and shoves the older boy away shooting darting glances at his mother. Will's smile falters and he scruffs Merlin's hair. "Love you, kid."_

"_Yeah," Merlin says, and as Will says his falsely cheery goodbye to Hunith he lifts his camera and snaps a photograph. _

"_Oh, Merlin. Don't be doing that," Will complains, tugging at his collar like it's too tight._

"_Of course I will be," he grins, sliding his tongue between his teeth in playful petulance. _

_Will runs a hand through his hair and smiles, leaning against the hood of his truck. "Yeah. Go on then, Merlin. Get yourself a career in that shit."_

"_You'd better leave, love, or it'll be dark when you get there," Merlin's mother says from the porch, smiling at her two favourite boys._

"_Yeah, 'course. Bye, then." _

_And Will is gone._

_

* * *

Merlin is meant to give a speech at the funeral. _

_He can't. _

_He doesn't know what to say, because he thought he knew Will. He thought he knew will so well, but the Will he knew would never, never, _never _kill himself. So Merlin can't say anything, really. He goes up to the podium and he stands there and after a while he realizes he's not said a word so he goes back to the pew and sits down again. _

_Later they lower the coffin into the earth and Merlin runs seven miles in the pouring rain and ruins his only suit. _

_In a month Hunith is gone. Just like that, her clothes and the suitcases are gone and there's no note or money or anything that Merlin can take as a sign of her love for him._

_He hears the door bang behind her while he's still half-asleep, and she never bothered to come in to say goodbye. _

_The house is empty but he doesn't want to leave it, because on the floor under Will's bed—the spare bed, now—is a thought he can't forget, scratched into the grain of the floor with the blade of a razor. It says '__Will McMillan/Merlin Emrys__,' and it's not in Merlin's power to leave his heart with those notches in the wood slats. There's also his pictures; how could he take them from their home, from their places on the walls? _

_So Merlin stays, alone, until the canned food is gone and he has to get a job, a really crap one at the local petrol joint (but beggars really can't be choosers, not even the reluctant ones). He finishes school and then he sits and tries not to think and takes photographs of empty, painful things until his uncle comes to take him away to London._

_

* * *

It's the first month in London that's the hardest. He's nineteen and he knows no one, not even his uncle, and he spends his days and nights wandering the city looking for people to take photographs of, things that have _meaning_ in this empty new world. He cuts himself to feel and he bleeds out his pain until the doctors chain him to a bed for a week and make him live with Gaius for a whole month._

_He goes back to his flat in Hoxton and _tries._ He's nineteen and a waxing poetic with big ears, a dead heart, and an old black camera. He sells his photographs when he needs money for food and now he drinks instead of bleeding when he wants to feel. _

_And then there's a man kneeling in the road and Merlin _begins.

_His heart comes out of its shell and with it comes an insatiable _craving _for relationships and emotions and touch and love, pure, powerful love. He wants to find the _one_. He's so sick of having his heart broken._

_And so begins the year of failed romance. Merlin falls in love so, so many times and each time his heart breaks a little more._

'Stop_ loving,' he tells his heart with Cedric, the guy with his eyes on Merlin's money. '_Stop _this,' when he falls again for Catrina, the beautiful girl with the hideous core. 'You've got to _stop_,' when he cracks under Nim, a simpering woman who shares his interest in photography and tries to steal his frames. _

_And then there is Freya. He's so sure she's it. Almost absolutely positive, when he finds her, abused and broken and living with his new friend Gil, and she clutches his legs and _begs _him to take her away. He does in a heartbeat, and there is a sixth-month period of bliss._

_They are in love, yes, but Freya cannot be held down. _

_She runs._

_And Merlin meets a familiar face from his past._

_And he begins again._

* * *

He just wants to be half of something, one side of a coin.

And there is Arthur.

**

* * *

**

**Yeah. Don't like this bit much. It annoys me. BUT it's pretty much uphill from here, guys! 3 chapters to go.**

**Merry Christmas if you celebrate it!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Real and proper this time, loves! Thanks to all who reviewed and told me I wasn't a failure for having an entire chapter as flashback. 65! 65 reviews now! I have so much love for you guys.**

**Sooo, I've written you a deliciously fluffy and entirely difficult-to-write chapter that is full of strange, Merliny goodness. Also, I'm typing this in the dark at 4:17 AM and I have a chem test that I didn't study for in 5 hours and an Art History test that I didn't study for in about 28, and I'm dead tired from getting in from Canada about three hours ago. But enough about me. ONWARD!**

* * *

**5 June 2010, 9:37**

Arthur stretches against Merlin—not Merlin. A pillow?

The bastard.

Merlin's put the long runner pillow in Arthur's arms in place of himself, and Arthur pushes it away, stumbling out of his bed and tottering to the door on sleep-stiff legs. Merlin's coat and shoes are gone but his scarf is wrapped through the wooden slats of one of the white breakfast chairs like a promise, so Arthur knows he'll be back.

In the kitchen there is a cup of cold coffee slowly turning to sludge in the cheery morning sunlight and Arthur hoists himself onto the counter, leaning his back against the window and drinking in the calmness of the moment. The coffee is strong how Merlin likes it, but Arthur doesn't bother to add milk to make it sweeter even though he drinks his white. It burns a bit going down and he wonders if strong drinks put hair on chests why Merlin's is so bare, and then blushes because he's thinking of Merlin's chest.

The music comes easily now, and he slots the bow against the strings with familiar grace, falling into the Dvorak he _knows_ he can play with Merlin back. When he hears the door open quietly he doesn't stop, even as tentative hands come to rest lightly on his shoulders and a bag holding Costa pastries and _Christ,_ a package from Morgana (God knows what's in that) thumps against the endpin of his cello.

"Hello, Dvorak," Merlin's soft voice whispers against his ear, and Arthur snorts, leaning into the touch and his music, bringing Merlin into the concerto and the _now _and smiling as he does it.

* * *

**19 June 2010, 02:16**

"Why did you go, when you ran away?"

Arthur's voice is soft but it still hurts Merlin somewhere deep in his chest. They're sprawled in one of Gwen's squashy armchairs, and rain washes down the cute little cottage-style windows of her semidetached house. She's asleep on the argyle-patterned couch, and Morgana is curled on the floor in front of the television with the remote cradled against her chest and static ants flickering softly across the screen behind her. Arthur's hands touch Merlin's jaw softly, thumbs running over his pulse with delicate brushes, and Merlin shivers at the thought of answering his gentle question.

"I went to visit my... a friend," he mumbles into Arthur's stupid pink polo with the golfer embroidered on the pocket.

"Someone I know?"

He shakes his head and Arthur lets it go.

Merlin thinks guiltily of how he crawled back to his ramshackle past, and the dusty, silent house with the sad memories and the little marks in the floor. He bites his lip and remembers sleeping under the skeleton of a bed with his chest pressed to the message that still hurts him a bit to read.

"His name was Will," Merlin offers, so quietly that the white noise of the television almost cancels his words out. Arthur nods and holds him tighter.

* * *

**2 July 2010, 13:28**

"I love you."

It's whispered into a gale that bruises Waterloo Bridge, so that the words fly back at Arthur and are nearly lost in the backfiring of a lorry, but he hears them all the same. He glances through the curtain of his hair and pulls his eyes over the strange shape of Merlin, all angles and degrees of uncertainty in his nondescript jumper and faded jeans as he twists away from Arthur.

Arthur's not meant to hear it. He smiles and reaches for Merlin's dry hand, curling their fingers together and pulling them into the pocket of his raincoat. Merlin jumps and looks sheepishly to see if his words have been noticed.

They're well-matched, because Merlin has an uncanny ability to read emotion into a single laugh-line, and Arthur is good at hiding things until the time is _right_. He smiles brightly, holding the soft feeling deep within his chest, and points Merlin's attention to a rainbow of oil on the dark canvas of the Thames.

* * *

**28 July 2010, 18:16**

The words bubble out of him and he's embarrassed, dropping his head back until he can only the flat gray sky above them. Merlin doesn't say anything at all, and when Arthur hazards a look his eyes are wide and staring and his lips are moving so fast they're just a blur.

Arthur reaches with tentative fingers and lays them over Merlin's mouth, closing his eyes and listening to the silence.

_Do you mean it do you mean it do you mean it do you mean it do you—_

He replaces his fingers with his lips.

_Yes._

* * *

**30 July 2010, 01:55**

Arthur walks (rides the bus with) Merlin home from a night of drinking at Gaius' for some stupid chivalrous reason, and Merlin's too far gone to care. They're both a bit more inebriated than they'd like to admit and their mouths fit together again and again and then somehow they're in Merlin's trashed bedroom and Arthur is digging a random stapler from beneath his hip while Merlin pushes him into the pillows and—

Well.

* * *

**12:31**

When Arthur wakes up Merlin is carding his hand through the tousled hair at Arthur's brow. He's curled a way that Arthur now recognizes is a defense against his anxieties.

"Hey," Arthur cracks, his voice husky and rough and full of heavy memories. Merlin touches his side, pressing his fingers to his hip bone, anchoring himself there. Arthur sighs and rolls closer, but Merlin suddenly stands, unfolds himself from the bed, and crawls under it.

"What—" Arthur begins, but Merlin is already ducking under his arm and pressing up against his side again, holding an armful of thick albums.

"I need to tell you some things about me," he says, quiet in Arthur's ear.

If Arthur is going to stay, there can't be any secrets.

* * *

**28 August 2010, 16:47**

Arthur likes to watch Merlin sign his photographs. He uses a variety of pens depending on the contrast he wants to produce with his writing. Sometimes the curling letters fade into the color of the photograph, and sometimes they shine in opposite ends of the spectrum.

There are lots of '_Merlin Emrys_' originals floating around Arthur's apartment. The black-and-white photographs do little to help the overall whiteness, but they bring some emotion and character into an otherwise empty place.

The signatures don't stop with the photographs, though. Sometimes Arthur will be puttering around his flat making coffee or doing laundry and he'll come across places where something has been written and rubbed away, and if he tips his head just right he can read the faint outline of the words. There's a _Merlin _on his counter, spelled from little nicks made with the knife Arthur uses to pare apples. Another _Merlin_ lives in the butter dish, etched into jam-stained lumps where many knives have been scraped and no one's bothered to wipe it off later. When Arthur cleans his bathroom he avoids the corner of the mirror where _Merlin Emrys _has been traced over so many times that the words stand out whenever the glass fogs over.

There are other signatures, in the early morning when Merlin is awake and Arthur is tenaciously holding onto sleep. Merlin clings to Arthur, and Arthur really doesn't mind because he's wrapped just as possessively around Merlin. Usually, Arthur wakes to thin arms tangled around him and long fingers tracing six letters to his shoulder, his chest, his neck.

_Merlin. Merlin. Merlin. Merlin. Merlin._

Merlin marks his territory with his signature, and Arthur definitely belongs to him.

* * *

**4 October 2010, 21:54**

The camera flashes and Arthur glances over his reading glasses with an enduring expression. "_Mer_lin."

Merlin lowers his camera shamelessly and peers over his knees from the other end of his much worn couch. "I like your new spectacles."

Arthur grits his teeth to keep from making soft eyes and pushes Merlin's face into the couch back with his socked foot. "Shut _up._"

"Okay," Merlin mumbles against the leather, and hugs Arthur's leg gently. Arthur's heart does a little dance in his chest and he swallows, pretends to turn pages for a few more minutes until he absolutely can_not_ focus and chucks the Harry Potter book Merlin's making him read over his shoulder, opening his arms.

"Give me the camera," he orders, whispery soft in Merlin's ear as he settles into Arthur's collar bone. Merlin doesn't hesitate, hands it over, and smiles contently as Arthur reaches around him to take a picture of them both.

"If it's not blurry, I want it in a frame," Arthur yawns, tucking the camera into its case and sliding it as far across the room as he can. He gathers Merlin against his chest and buries his face in the soft hair that he has now determined is a very rich brown that is so dark it's _almost but not quite_ black. Merlin makes a noise that is equivalent to a purr and flops against him, curling between the back of the couch and Arthur's side and already falling asleep there.

"Idiot," Arthur says softly, brushing back Merlin's dorky fringe and pressing a kiss to the pale forehead he's uncovered. Merlin sighs again, and Arthur wonders how either of them _lived_ before this.

* * *

**11 October 2010, 20:10**

"What? Merlin, calm down, I can't—here, talk to Arthur."

Morgana shoves her mobile against his ear, and Arthur scrabbles to hold it up. "Merlin. Breathe with me, alright? In. Out. In. Out. Good. Can you tell me what's—what? Yes, I—_what?_ Alright, I'm coming over _right now,_ don't leave without me."

He throws the phone to Gwen and drops his spare key on the table, trying to shake off the effects of the Tequila Morgana had brought to his surprise twenty-ninth birthday party. "Gwen—I'm going to Merlin's; stay as long as you like, both of you, but lock up behind you."

Gwen fumbles for the key and stares at him with wide eyes. "What—?"

Arthur lets out his breath in a huge gust, grabbing handfuls of his hair and tilting his head back. "They've found Merlin's mum."

* * *

**21:38**

Merlin sits in the hard plastic chair with his knees drawn up under his chin and his long fingers meticulously ripping a magazine advert into fuzzy shreds. Arthur reaches over and gently pries the abused paper from his grip, offering Merlin his hand to worry instead. Merlin latches onto it with fingers that are shaking and cold—he has poor circulation when he's worried—and Arthur rubs them with more reassurance than he can truthfully voice.

"Emrys?" a nurses says, pumps clacking across the tile of the hospital lobby until she stands a few feet from Merlin, tilting her blonde head to the side and smiling kindly. "Merlin Emrys?"

His large blue eyes are bright and fearful as they lock with Arthur's. Arthur exhales slowly, trying to breathe calmness into his boyfriend.

Sometimes Merlin's twenty-one years seem painfully young to Arthur's twenty-eight. Arthur squeezes his cold hand and pulls him to his feet. "Yes?" he answers for Merlin, who trembles like a leaf against his side.

"Ms. Emrys is stabilized and conscious. You can see her now, if you want." The nurse's gentle eyes dart to Arthur, to his hand locked in Merlin's painful grip, and they crinkle in understanding. "I'm afraid it's family only, sir," she says to him, not unkindly. Arthur sighs, and Merlin clings. The nurse blinks, and then makes amends with: "In the room."

"C'mon, Merlin," Arthur urges, pressing the toe of his hastily-donned slipper against Merlin's dirty trainer until he takes a hesitant step towards the white ward the nurse is clacking down. Merlin clutches his hand half-heartedly now, his expression struggling somewhere between fearful and excited, and Arthur gives him a good push. That's all it takes to send Merlin stumbling after the nurse as quickly as his shaking legs will take him. Arthur follows at a more leisurely pace, holding himself back when he really just wants to grab Merlin and take him away from the woman who left him so broken.

He ghosts in the doorway to the room into which Merlin disappeared and bites his lip roughly. He watches Merlin crumple to the floor at his mother's bedside, watches him fist his hands in her hospital gown and sob like a child. Watches Hunith's hand stroke through his hair, her hand that is bony and fragile and studded with wires that connect her to the frightening machines surrounding her bed. Watches her tilt Merlin's chin to look at his face, watches him clutch at her wrists tightly and desperately.

When Merlin forces his six-foot frame between his mothers' side and the metal bars of the hospital bed, curling his arms around her paper thin shoulders, Arthur has to turn away. He presses his fists to the cool plaster wall of the hallway and braces his forehead between them.

He misses his mother. He misses his father. He misses his work.

Hell, he misses his _brother._

* * *

**Hey, guess what? Colin Morgan is only 5 10, but I'm writing this so he can be as tall as I want. Mhmmmm.**

**I regret to inform you that there are only 2 chapters left. TWO! God, and then after that I'll have to write a NEW fic, aaugh. No rest for the fangirls, I swear.**

**Thanks for sticking this far, bbs. I love you all :)**

**Now, if I get to sleep in the next three minutes, I can have almost 1.25 hours of uninterrupted sleep before I go die...**


	10. Chapter 10

**Hello! Shit, sorry, it's been a long time *headdesk*, but I've had exams and auditions and sister problems and general social brainfart, so it's been a bit hard for me to sit down and edit/rewrite. *Deep breath***

**I now present the first half of the end. I could post both at once, but I'm evil. Eeeeevil. Enjoy the copiously sweet ending I've written for you-I thought Merlin and Arthur deserved a break ;)**

**(Take THAT, Love is a strange thing! I _can_ write fluff!)**

**Please do note that time moves a bit differently (faster, less specifically) in this section, with a broader narration. Also there are two f-bombs. I've had a trying week -_-**

* * *

**November 2010 – May 2011**

Hunith moves into Gaius' cubbyhole guest room and Arthur's cello lessons melt from once a week to three times a week so that Merlin can accompany him and catch up with his mother afterwards. Arthur watches as he gradually comes out of his shell, and one day Hunith pulls him aside and _hugs _him, for Christ's sake. He hasn't been hugged by a mother since he was six, and he manfully holds back the tears that threaten to blur out his vision.

"_Thank you,"_ Merlin's mother says against his shoulder as he pats her back awkwardly. "They told me he was so depressed he—oh! I—what was I—don't even know…."

Arthur can't say that he likes Hunith, doesn't forgive her for what she did to Merlin, but knowing that she understands her mistake stirs a little warmth in him that he can't contain. He starts joining Merlin and his mother for tea, and the more he gets to know her the more parts of Merlin he understands.

After several months too many of your-house-or-mine business they decide to cut to the chase and shack up. They sell Merlin's flat and fill Arthur's with all his junk, and slowly the sterile cell Arthur's been living in actually becomes a home, complete with a ridiculous singing fish mounted above the wide bed which they spread with Merlin's cream duvet (which doesn't match Arthur's white sheets no matter _what _Gwen insists when she tries to break up their bedclothes argument).

"It's just _blankets,_" Morgana says dismissively as she begins stuffing Merlin's disturbingly large scarf collection into Arthur's underwear drawer.

But it isn't just blankets. In truth, none of their things match, and Arthur often finds himself cringing at what was once a pristine white apartment that now teems with rugs and scratched furniture and so many other useless_ things_ that he can hardly see the lovely clean walls.

"You told me all the white made you feel uneasy," Merlin comments, sweeping through the cluttered kitchen with an excessive number of homemade pot holders—apparently the reason Merlin had so many yarn crafts was due to his eccentric preoccupation with _knitting,_ of all things—and chocolate bars.

Arthur squirms and mutters and whines until even Gwen loses sympathy for him, but really he's uneasy about sharing his space with another person. As much as he wants to live with Merlin, to take their relationship to another, more solid level, he's childishly afraid of getting too attached. Arthur is more afraid than he'll admit of Merlin leaving him now that he's discovered not everyone he loves will disappear.

He confesses his fears to Morgana, which should be an obvious thing to avoid doing, and she boxes his ears and pinches his cheeks and kisses him in what can only be described as enthusiastic disparagement.

"You absolute _idiot_! Oh, you two are so stupid together you belong in an institution for overanxious gays…. Merlin's not going to fucking walk away from you just because he has a fractional amount of newfound confidence. He _loves_ you, and you damn well better love him back or I'll rape you with a wooden spoon."

With that bit of graphic incentive, he tries to dispel the irrational fear of abandonment by buying Merlin lots of pretty things that will make him stay. Merlin looks at Arthur like he's crazy and dumps the items (silk shirts and leather shoes and a silver watch with matching cufflinks) back in their respective packages and tells him that he doesn't want bribes. Arthur protests that they're _gifts_ when Merlin shoves his wringing hands out of his lap and places himself there instead, effectively shutting Arthur up by mumbling in his lips that they don't need _gifts_ to stay together, and Merlin certainly doesn't need any reason to stay with Arthur other than the fact that they love each other.

**

* * *

11 October, 2011**

On Arthur's thirtieth birthday, he receives a letter made with heavy cardstock and ostentatiously curling script. It _"Cordially wishes Mr. Arthur Pendragon a happy birthday by way of Mr. Mordred Pendragon, Pendragon Incorporated Headquarters, London, England_," and Arthur feels like ripping it in half. Gwen's gentle touch restrains him long enough for Merlin to quietly remove the card, which contains Mordred's pretentious signature and personal contact details that he _knows_ Arthur will want when he's calmed down.

Sure enough, after the party winds down and Gwen helps a tipsy Morgana hail a cab, Arthur finds himself with the cordless phone cradled against his ear and Merlin's fingers soothing up and down the line of his spine.

His brother answers the phone with a tired "Hello?", and Arthur's breath leaves him in a shaky sigh.

"Mordred," he says softly, and there is silence on the end of the line for a few moments before he hears an answering crackle with Mordred's own deep exhalation. And then he finds himself half-laughing, half-crying into Merlin's lap while his boyfriend quickly consents to joining the Pendragon brothers for supper the next evening at the undeniably posh _Le Gavroche._

A weight is lifted from Arthur's stomach, a weight he never thought he carried, and finally released from it, he remembers something his mind has been choosing to ignore for years.

Mordred's first word, said with complete and total brotherly adoration, was _Arthur._

Time passes.

**

* * *

November 2011-May 2012**

After a few awkward months of catching up, Arthur and Mordred establish a careful but definite bond. Arthur begins working for Pendragon Incorporated again, eventually rising to co-manage with his brother. Clients and employees alike are witness to intense fights between the two, but no one can deny the incredible turn the company takes for the better with the Pendragons working together.

Mordred and Morgana, who have extremely similar personalities and seem to grate on each other, get spectacularly drunk, hook up, and decide they're in love. Morgana dates exclusively for the first time in her life, and claims that Mordred has the same blue eyes that initially attracted her to Arthur (who never knew Morgana even _liked_ him), but none of his irritating feminine tendencies.

Mordred is gleefully pleased by this jab at his brother, and Arthur, rightfully affronted, asks Merlin for backup on his manliness. Merlin, deeply engrossed in Gwen's copy of Hello!, flatly says "Who rides the chair, Arthur?" and the room dissolves into howls.

**

* * *

June**

Hunith eats well in Gaius' house, and reclaims most of the weight and shape she'd been losing since Merlin was a toddler and his father left. She's in her late forties and still quiet lovely, and when she gets a bit of her old spunk back she has a prolonged fling with Gaius' Clooney-esque nurse, Jasper. It's too horrible for Merlin even to think about, and he and Arthur conduct a haphazard plan to get Gaius drunker than ever in a form of childish revenge against the alcohol-fearing nurse. The plan backfires when they wake up on the kitchen floor the next day to see Hunith and Jasper spooning on the sofa in the same miserable state as everyone else.

Jasper turns out to be a really fantastic cook. Merlin agrees on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy with his mother and her boyfriend provided he and Arthur get weekly Sunday brunch in the form of omelets and Belgian waffles.

**

* * *

October 2012-April 2013**

Gwen meets a truly gorgeous man by spilling his tactless Americano all down his suit front. He declines the dry-cleaning money she hysterically offers him but accepts her mobile number and a kiss, and less than four months later she marries Lance in a fairytale wedding with white doves and all the clichéd fixings. Merlin is the photographer, and Arthur has a particularly vocal row with him for making gooey eyes at the groom while shooting the official pictures. Morgana and Mordred smoke in the cemetery of the church and gripe about the impracticality of matrimony.

Their wedding two months later is small but equally as pompous. Merlin is the maid of honor, which he finds rather condescending but is grateful at least that he gets to wear trousers. Arthur, as best man, holds his hand through the whole ceremony.

Arthur asks Merlin to dance with a bow, and while they waltz around the room to a weird crooning dirge chosen by Morgana he flattens his hands possessively along Merlin's back. His lips touch Merlin's endearingly large ear as he whispers, "Who's the man, fair maiden?"

Merlin's response is to grab his bum and haul him forward, for one agonizing second pressing flush against him. "I still say it's me, but if you like you can prove me wrong later tonight."

Arthur is speechless, and Merlin takes the opportunity to hand him off to Morgana. Arthur flinches as her hands grip his shoulders smugly, and nearly cries in horror when she kisses him squarely on the lips. It doesn't help that over the poof of her hair Merlin is spinning dizzily with _fucking_ _Lance._

Arthur drags Merlin out of the church at his first opportunity, and they skip the reception in favor of less wholesome activities.

**

* * *

New message! **

**Message Morgana!:**

hello brther ;)))

.

**New message!**

**Message Arthur:**

thats so disturbing.

* * *

**Next time is last. **

**xxox, Ally**


	11. Chapter 11

**It's here. We've done it.**

**Thank you all for sticking with me as long as you have! I love you all (lurking lurkers, too)!**

**I'm gypping you with this very short coda-like ending, but my beta Love is a strange thing made me promise _very_ early on that I'd end this with something clichéd and happy. I have. I figured everyone deserved it. **

**So, for the last time: **

**

* * *

7 November, 2013**

Arthur comes home from work to photographs spread across the entire flat, all with little colored bits of paper stuck to their corners. He picks his way through the wash of glossy images and finds Merlin in the kitchen on the only clear patch of floor. Arthur sits on the counter next to the fruit juicer and stares.

"What are you doing?" he asks eventually, because the suspense is killing him.

"I'm publishing a book," Merlin says, his bored tone implying that it should be obvious.

Arthur blinks and shuffles closer to the breadbox, setting the butter dish on his knees and making a butty sandwich with his fingers. "Of?"

"Everything."

He opens his mouth to ask another question, but Merlin shoots him an exasperated glare over his shoulder and Arthur decides against it. Setting his half-formed meal aside, he quickly texts Gwen and arranges to meet her for tea at his favorite touristy café, pausing to drop a kiss to Merlin's (overgrown, starting to curl in a fascinating way at his nape) hair on his way out.

"Get me some lemon pasties," is the grumbled response he gets to this display of affection.

"Did he not tell you?" Gwen asks with surprise as she watches Arthur stir lump after lump of sugar into his already white tea.

"Tell me _what?_" he growls, clacking his spoon on the saucer violently. Gwen flinches.

"He's—Merlin is—composing an autobiography using photographs from when he was a child until now," she said carefully, twisting a dark curl around her finger and looking at Arthur in concern. "He's been planning it for a few months now."

When he returns with the bag of sweets the floor is free of photographs and Merlin is sprawled on their black leather couch with a self-satisfied smile on his face. He shoves a pasty into his mouth and takes Arthur's hand, bouncing excitedly as he gestures to a folder on the table.

Arthur sits him down, resting his hands on Merlin's shoulders when the younger man seems like he might shoot up to the ceiling in his exuberance, and carefully opens the folder across their laps.

The shots are categorized into four separate groups.

The first photograph in section one is of Will, but a younger Will than the ones Merlin has shown him before. This Will is perhaps fourteen, and curled on the end of Merlin's front porch with his forehead resting on his knees. There is a counterpart on the next page of an empty room speckled with dust motes, and Merlin's reflection in the wardrobe mirror, the flash of the camera blurring out the lower half of his body and highlighting his empty face. The caption beneath the two is the same, _Left Behind, _the title of the section_. _Arthur squeezes Merlin's knee.

The pictures after that show Merlin growing progressively older, from infancy to around ten years, and Arthur notices that the style of photographs is similar but slightly different from Merlin's, more precise and pristine but at the same time warmer somehow. There is a note on these, _Courtesy of John Balinor_—Merlin's father. His professional photographs melt into the low-quality experiments of a recently fatherless Merlin.

The frames get steadier. There are several more shots of Will, and some of Hunith, each growing more and more wounded in the eyes. There are the photographs of Will that Merlin showed him, and one of them kissing that makes Arthur's jaw clench a bit. The last photograph in this section is of a corpse, and his fingers jerk away. It's Will's, pale and blue and stiff, and beside Arthur Merlin tenses. Arthur flips the photograph over quickly.

The next section begins with a self-portrait that makes Arthur want to cry. Merlin's eyes are shockingly light in the photo but milky and blank. His skin appears waxy, and his lips are chapped and in a straight line of pain. The caption here is _Lost._ The photographs that follow are painful for Arthur to look at, and a glance to Merlin shows that he is choosing to watch Arthur instead of the images.

There is a wash of faces, different lovers with a range of emotions on their faces. Arthur can tell from the start who actually loved Merlin, and who was just as broken as him. None last long. Morgana and Gwen and Gaius flit through the empty faces, all looking concerned and slightly afraid, reaching out to the camera.

The last photograph is of a coffee from Costa, and Arthur lets out a short laugh when he realizes that it's the cup they shared in the park the day he lost his job. He reaches for Merlin's hand and twists their fingers together.

The penultimate section is titled _Arthur,_ and starts with a photograph of simply that. He is sleeping, his eyelashes throwing shadows over his cheeks and his lips parted softly. In the unfocused foreground, Merlin's hand lays palm-to-palm against his.

What comes next is a montage of his face, their shoes under a table, his back, their shoulders, them kissing, them making music, him, him, him, them, them, them. Gwen and Morgana are here too, more properly displayed than in their short role in the _Lost_ period, but always with Arthur.

The very last photograph is loose from the others. It's of their hands again, locked much like they are now, fingers laced tightly and palms pressed close together. The caption is missing, and now Merlin presses it onto the image like a coda, a reprise of the main melody, sweet as it brings the composition to a satisfying ending. Arthur squints to read the messy handwriting and makes out one word.

_Future_.

He breathes in, relishing his breath much like he did the first time he met Merlin. This isn't simply what Merlin foresees in the months or even years to come, Arthur knows that by the way Merlin suddenly shakes next to him. He wants _commitment_.

"Yes," he says quietly, touching their linked hands to the hands in the photograph. Merlin makes a soft noise, somewhere between a gasp and a sigh, and then he is laughing, dropping the folder to the ground and catching Arthur in his arms.

"This is forever, you know," Arthur says between gentle kisses. "I'm not having you run off with Lance next spring."

"Yes," Merlin says peacefully, brushing his lips to the curve of Arthur's cheek.

Arthur pinches his arm playfully. "Yes, you're going to elope with Gwen's white knight?"

Merlin's gaze is clear and sure when he catches Arthur's chin and holds him still, blue eyes boring into blue eyes. "Yes, I want you forever and beyond, and all of the other sappy sentiments that couples say when pledging their lives to each other, too."

"Oh," Arthur smiles, stealing another kiss. "Then: you had me at 'Hello.'"

Merlin grins against his mouth. "I believe what I said was 'watch out.' You _were_ about to get hit by a car."

Arthur's free hand flaps noncommittally in the air, catching Merlin's shoulder lightly and curling where it lands. "Details, details."

They're clichéd and they know it, but frankly, my dears, they don't give a damn.

_

* * *

_

_Come on, honey_  
_Fly with me!_

-Queen

**~xoxo Ally**


End file.
